david janssens - between athens and jerusalem_ philosophy, prophecy, and politics in leo...

B E T W E E N A T H E N SA N D J E R U S A L E MPHILOSOPHY, PROPHECY, AND POLITICS IN LEO STRAUSS’S EARLY THOUGHT

DAVID JANSSENS

Between Athens and Jerusalem

SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo StraussKenneth Hart Green, editor

Between Athens and Jerusalem

Philosophy, Prophecy, and Politics inLeo Strauss’s Early Thought

David Janssens

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Published byState University of New York Press, Albany

© 2008 David Janssens

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Janssens, David, 1971–[Tussen Athene en Jerusalem. English]Between Athens and Jerusalem : philosophy, prophecy, and politics in

Leo Strauss’s early thought / David Janssens.p. cm. — (SUNY series in the thought of Leo Strauss and his legacy)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-7391-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)1. Strauss, Leo. I. Title.

B945.S84J3613 2008181'.06—dc22

2007017443

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Margot and Camille

Idesthe tôde tô kasignètô, philoi

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Contents

List of Abbreviations ix

Leo Strauss’s Early Years: Chronology of Major Events and xiWritings (1899–1937)

Introduction 1

CHAPTER 1. “In the Grip of the Theological-Political Predicament” 7

The Theological-Political Problem and the Jewish Question 7Back to Reality: Emancipation, Assimilation, and Zionism 8“God and Politics” 11Biblical Politics, Biblical Science, and the New Theology 18Quaestio Iuris: The Legacy of Spinoza 26

CHAPTER 2. The Shadow of Spinoza 31

“A Humanly Incomprehensible Betrayal” 31Before the Tribunal: Biblical Science and the Critique 37

of ReligionSpinoza’s Twofold Strategy 42Maimonides: The Limits of Reason and the Interest 54

in RevelationCalvin: “Like Clay in the Potter’s Hand” 62Happiness and Ridicule: The Epicurean Connection 66Farewell to Spinoza 71

vii

CHAPTER 3. The Second Cave 77

The Crisis of the Enlightenment: Jacobi, Mendelssohn, 77and the Pantheism Controversy

Atheism, Intellectual Probity, and the Love of Truth 90The Socratic Question and the Fate of Philosophy 96

CHAPTER 4. The Order of Human Things 109

Medieval Enlightenment: Nomos and Platonic Politics 109Between the Lines: The Art of Writing 123“A Horizon Beyond Liberalism”: The Debate with 133

Carl Schmitt

CHAPTER 5. Socrates and the Leviathan 149

Hobbes’s Motive 149“The Right Order of Society” 153Fighting the Kingdom of Darkness 165

CHAPTER 6. Epilogue 173

The Surface and the Core 173The Problem of Socrates 177Machiavelli’s Oblivion 187Natural Right and the Socratic Question 190From Jerusalem to Athens (and Back) 192

Notes 195

Bibliography 241

Index 251

viii CONTENTS

Abbreviations

AAPL The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws

CM The City and Man

EW The Early Writings

FPP Faith and Political Philosophy

GS 1 Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1



JPCM Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity

LAM Liberalism Ancient and Modern

NRH Natural Right and History

OT On Tyranny

PAW Persecution and the Art of Writing

PL Philosophy and Law

PPH The Political Philosophy of Hobbes

RCPR The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism

SA Socrates and Aristophanes

SCR Spinoza’s Critique of Religion

SPPP Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy

TM Thoughts on Machiavelli

WPP What Is Political Philosophy?

ix

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Leo Strauss’s Early YearsChronology of Major Events and Writings

(1899–1937)

1899 Born in Kirchhain, Hessen, on September 20, 1899.

1912–1917 Attends the Gymnasium Philippinum in Marburg. Is “con-verted” to political Zionism in 1916. Joins Zionist studentorganization Jüdischer Wanderbund Blau-Weiss.

1917–1921 Studies philosophy, mathematics, and natural sciences atthe universities of Marburg, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin,and Hamburg. Performs military service in Belgium fromJuly to December 1918. Acquaintance with Jacob Klein,Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Löwith, Gerhard Krüger, andHans Jonas.

1921 Obtains PhD at the University of Hamburg with a disserta-tion titled “The Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophi-cal Doctrine of Fr. H. Jacobi,” supervised by Ernst Cassirer.

1922 Spends postdoctoral year at the University of Freiburg,where he attends the lectures of Julius Ebbinghaus, EdmundHusserl, and Martin Heidegger.

1922–1925 Participates in the Free Jewish House of Learning (Freiesjüdisches Lehrhaus) in Frankfurt am Main, founded byFranz Rosenzweig. Acquaintance with Nehama Leibowitz,Julius Guttmann, and Nahum Glatzer.

1923 “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle’”; “The Holy”;“A Note on the Discussion of ‘Zionism and Anti-Semitism’”;“The Zionism of Nordau.”

xi

1924 “Paul de Lagarde”; “Sociological Historiography?”; “Reviewof Albert Levkowitz, Contemporary Religious Thinkers”; “Onthe Argument with European Science”; “Cohen’s Analysis ofSpinoza’s Bible Science.”

1925–1932 Appointed by Julius Guttmann as researcher at the Acad-emy for the Science of Judaism (Akademie für die Wis-senschaft des Judentums) in Berlin.

1925 “Ecclesia Militans”; “Biblical Science and History”; “Com-ment on Weinberg’s Critique.”

1926 “On the Bible Science of Spinoza and His Precursors.”

1927 Acquaintance with Gershom Scholem.

1928 “Review of Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion.”

1929 “Franz Rosenzweig and the Academy for the Science of Judaism”; “Conspectivism”; “On the Ideology of Politi-cal Zionism.”

1930 Spinoza’s Critique of Religion; “Religious Situation of the Present.”

1931 “Cohen and Maimonides”; “Review of Julius Ebbinghaus,On the Progress of Metaphysics”; “Introductions to MosesMendelssohn, Collected Works”; “Preface to a Projected Bookon Hobbes.”

1932 Obtains a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and relocatesto Paris. Acquaintance with Alexandre Kojève, AlexandreKoyré, Raymond Aron, and Louis Massignon. “The Testa-ment of Spinoza”; “Comments on Carl Schmitt, The Conceptof the Political”; “The Religious Situation of the Present”;“Introductions to Moses Mendelssohn, Collected Works.”

1933 Marries Mirjam Bernson. “Some Remarks on Hobbes’s Political Science”; “Hobbes’s Critique of Religion: A Con-tribution to the Understanding of the Enlightenment.” Attempts to secure a position at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem, without success.

1934 Relocates to London. Acquaintance with Ernest Barker.“Hobbes’s Critique of Religion: A Contribution to theUnderstanding of the Enlightenment.”

xii LEO STRAUSS’S EARLY YEARS

1935 Moves to Cambridge. Acquaintance with Richard H.Tawney. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis; Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Under-standing of Maimonides and His Predecessors.

1936 “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonidesand Alfarabi”; “A Lost Writing of Alfarabi”; “Introductionsto Moses Mendelssohn, Collected Works.”

1937 Relocates to the United States. Appointed Research Fellowin the Department of History at Columbia University, NewYork. “The Place of the Doctrine of Providence in the Opin-ion of Maimonides”; “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Ten-dency and Political Teaching”; “On Abravanel’s Critique ofKingship”; “Introductions to Moses Mendelssohn, CollectedWorks”; “A Recollection/Reminder of Lessing.”

LEO STRAUSS’S EARLY YEARS xiii

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1

Introduction

Was verlangt ein Philosoph am ersten und letzten von sich?Seine Zeit in sich zu überwinden, “zeitlos” zu werden.

Womit also hat er seinen härtesten Strauss zu bestehen?Mit dem, worin gerade er das Kind seiner Zeit ist. Wohlan!

—Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner

“The story of a life in which the only real events were thoughts is easily told.”1

With these words, Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind,began an “in memoriam” for the man he regarded as his most importantteacher: Leo Strauss. Of course, in a historical light, Bloom’s phrase appearsto stretch the truth somewhat. Born in 1899 in Germany, Strauss was forcedto flee to the United States in the 1930s, along with many other intellectuals.There he died, in 1973, after a richly filled career at a number of Americanuniversities, most notably the University of Chicago. The course of his life,then, runs parallel to the anything-but-uneventful twentieth century.

On further consideration, nevertheless, Bloom’s words do contain agrain of truth. Whoever opens a book by Strauss for the first time will soonbe under the impression of dealing with a Kammergelehrte, a scholar se-cluded from all public life. The majority of his academic work is devoted tothe interpretation of great texts, primarily of philosophy, but also of theol-ogy and even of classical poetry. Because of this, he has often been labeleda historian of ideas. However, his interpretive method is bound to strikethe reader as particularly unhistorical and untimely, if not antiquarian. Attimes, his interpretations are reminiscent of medieval commentaries, withtheir patient, long-winded, and sometimes slightly awkward paraphrases.For Strauss, only the text and nothing but the text seems to matter, or moreprecisely: nothing but the thoughts contained therein. References to thehistorical context, both of the past and of the present, are very rare indeed.

The fact that Strauss’s life largely took place within the four walls of astudy does not prevent his thought from having led to a whole range of

“events” in the conventional sense of the word. Already during his lifetime,his work was the object of heated and sometimes bitter controversies withinthe American academic world. Since his death, the discussion has continuedcrescendo and has even spread far beyond the context of the academy. Whenin 1996 Time magazine declared him to be “one of the most influential peo-ple in American politics,” these words offered only an inkling of what wasyet to come.2 In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Amer-ican response, Strauss’s putative connection to the neoconservative move-ment within the U.S. government sparked a widespread and passionatedebate that continues to this very day. This is no small achievement for aGerman immigrant of Jewish origin, a quarter of a century after his death.

How can a reclusive scholar raise so much dust, and for so long, out-side the confines of his study, and even beyond the confines of the academy?Of course, the responsibility of an author for the reception of his work is always difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, the most important points of de-bate can be clearly delineated. The controversy concerns, first, the motiva-tion and intention at the heart of Strauss’s work. His research into thesources of political thought, after all, goes hand in hand with a critical atti-tude toward modernity and its characteristic political form: liberal democ-racy. In this respect, he is often mentioned in conjunction with HannahArendt and Eric Voegelin, two other immigrants of his generation. Withthese authors he shares the view that the modern project reveals certainstructural shortcomings, which have led, ultimately, to a deep crisis. Themost conspicuous symptoms of this crisis are not only the predominance ofpositivism, relativism, and historicism, but also the painful incapacity of lib-eral democracy to defend itself against the undermining effect of these ideas.In order to ward off the dangers that they kindle, a thorough rethinking ofthe philosophical, moral, and political foundations of modernity is neces-sary. This project cannot succeed, however, without a keen willingness tostudy and learn from thinkers of the past.

It is hardly surprising that these views met with opprobrium and op-position, as they did in the case of his two better-known contemporaries,especially in a country considered to be a model liberal democracy and abulwark of modernity, freedom, and progress. In the strongly polarizedAmerican political landscape, Strauss came to be generally regarded as aconservative thinker. While this label has generated the inevitable criticismfrom the other side of the political spectrum, the tone is often considerablysharper and more dismissive than in the cases of Arendt and Voegelin. Oneof the principal reasons is the remarkable position he develops and defendsin his interpretation of texts.

2 BETWEEN ATHENS AND JERUSALEM

According to Strauss, a considerable number of great philosophers ofthe past were faced with the phenomenon of political and religious perse-cution. To circumvent this danger, they were forced to employ exceptionalcare in the way they expressed themselves in their writings. Each in his waymade use of a technique Strauss called “the art of writing carefully” or “theart of writing between the lines”: through diverse literary means, they hidtheir unconventional and even subversive ideas behind a conventional fa-cade adjusted to reigning opinion. In this way, they made sure that theirideas were only accessible to kindred spirits. With the birth of the Enlight-enment and the diffusion of philosophy to a much larger public, this artwas largely forgotten. An adequate understanding of premodern authorstherefore demands that this art be learned anew—among other things, bypaying as much attention to the form of their writings as to the content—but also that one reflect on the changes that have occurred in the course oftime in the relationship between philosophy and political society.

Even though Strauss developed this thesis with the greatest caution,documenting it carefully and extensively, it has been seen by many as highlyprovocative, not to say offensive. It is not difficult to see that Strauss’s ap-proach radically calls into question the conventional historical interpreta-tion of philosophical works, which is mainly the fruit of the Enlightenment.Among other things, it leads to the notion that the real opinions of an au-thor can differ strongly from those ascribed to him by conventional read-ings. The idea that an author is the stepchild rather than the child of histime is bound to evoke suspicion and even resistance in an era that cele-brates historicity. Hence, it is hardly surprising that Strauss’s hermeneuticshave been strongly criticized by contemporary philosophers.

Even more than for its hermeneutical and philosophical aspects,Strauss’s approach has been attacked for its political implications. The sug-gestion that the relationship between philosophy and society is a fundamen-tal problem that also deserves attention in a liberal and democratic societyhas led to reactions ranging from suspicion and insinuation to outright de-nunciation, aimed not merely at the work, but at the person as well. Ac-cording to some of the more extravagant critics, Strauss considers the truthto be too dangerous for society, and his work is a covert plea for the rule ofa philosophical elite controlling the masses for their own good by means ofsalutary myths. “Elitist,” “sectarian,” “antiliberal,” “antidemocratic,” and“antimodern” are but a few of the epithets ascribed to him over the years.3

That the criticism has taken on such extreme forms, however, is notonly the accomplishment of his antagonists, but also that of some of his allies.In the course of his long career in the United States, Strauss undoubtedly

INTRODUCTION 3

made his mark. He is reputed to have been an inspiring teacher with a greatintellectual power of attraction.4 Several generations of students followed hisexample in studying a wide range of authors.5 Some of them, who identifythemselves explicitly as “Straussians,” have developed his critical dialoguewith modernity and his recovery of premodern thought into an avowedlyconservative political position. A few actually embarked on a political career,which led many critics, often with little or no knowledge of his work, to de-nounce Strauss as the maître à penser of American neoconservatism. In thatunlikely position, his name appeared in 1996 in the pages of Time, and, after9/11, in almost all other media.

The result of this overly politicized polemic is that both sides combateach other in the name of what is often a caricature. Indeed, Strauss madeno secret of the fact that his political preferences tended toward conser-vatism, even if he was acutely aware of the limitations of every politicalstance.6 Still, it is doubtful whether he would have recognized himself inthe fierce cultural criticism and the passionate political commitment ofsome of his intellectual descendants. Only too often the fundamental ques-tions he tried to raise anew have been welded all too rashly into ready-made answers by some. In addition, one would be hard put to attribute tohim virulently antiliberal or antidemocratic tendencies. As a refugee fromthe violence of totalitarianism, he explicitly expressed his debt as well as hisloyalty to the country that received him. This did not prevent him, how-ever, from emphasizing that the friend of liberal democracy cannot be itsflatterer, but must be the one who approaches its claims critically in orderto be able to defend it when necessary.7

Compared to the American reception, European scholarship, whichhas been developing for some time, appears to be less charged with politi-cal and ideological differences. As a result, its appraisal of Strauss’s work isoften more balanced and nuanced, not least because more attention is paidto the historical and the intellectual context in which Strauss’s thought de-veloped. In France, where large parts of his work have been translated, hisreputation is by now firmly established. A host of eminent political philoso-phers—Raymond Aron, Pierre Manent, and Claude Lefort among them—have devoted studies to him, in which they point to the philosophical valueof his hermeneutics and the critical potential of his thought.8 In Germany,his country of origin, interest is growing steadily after a long period of nearsilence, not least thanks to a careful edition of his complete works, severalvolumes of which have already appeared.9 This edition has made clear thata considerable and important part of Strauss’s thought and work in fact


predates his relocation to the United States. As a result, Strauss is slowlybeing recognized as a major European thinker in his own right.

The aim of this book is to introduce the early European Strauss to anEnglish-speaking readership, as well as to show that an appreciation of thisStrauss is a vital prerequisite for understanding the later American Strauss.On a number of occasions, Strauss expressly stated that, from the very be-ginning, his investigations were guided by a single theme. Different com-mentators, some of whom knew him personally, confirm that he haddeveloped his key questions and issues at a very early stage, only to furtherdevelop and deepen them over time. Thus, the German philosopher HansJonas, who attended Martin Heidegger’s seminars together with Strauss inthe early 1920s, testifies as follows: “Strauss came to Heidegger with hisquestions fully formed.”10 Similarly, the French philosopher Rémi Brague,an astute longtime reader of Strauss, has claimed: “In any case, it seems tobe legitimate to presume that . . . Strauss never strayed from his initial po-sitions concerning the fundamental questions, and that he held on to themfor a very long time, not to say during his entire life.”11 Finally, his studentAllan Bloom confirms: “A survey of Strauss’ entire body of work will revealthat it constitutes a unified and continuous, ever deepening investiga-tion.”12 Hence, an in-depth study of his early writings proves to be a valu-able complement to that of his later works.

Oddly enough, however, the early writings that came about before hismigration to the United States, and in which his questioning takes form,have hardly been studied in the vast body of secondary literature. Wheneverthey are referred to, in general this is merely to make a biographical point.This lacuna is rather peculiar, since the authors who refer to the early worknever fail to stress its great importance. Thus, we find the following remarkin the introduction to an American collection of essays on Strauss: “whatcan be considered as the ‘European Strauss’ still needs to receive necessaryattention.”13 In the same vein, two German authors state bluntly: “All ofStrauss’s writings, in German and in English, find their origins in the semi-nal studies done during the Weimar Republic.”14 Even the great historianand classicist Arnaldo Momigliano called the early work “essential to who-ever seeks to reconstruct the genesis of Strauss’ thought.”15

The characteristics I have discussed here—the great unity, consistency,and continuity of Strauss’s work—are central to the design and organizationof this book. Among other things, they offer a unique opportunity to com-bine an introductory work with a contribution to contemporary scholar-ship. The adjective “introductory” must be taken literally: in the following

INTRODUCTION 5

chapters the genesis of Strauss’s thought is reconstructed from the start bymeans of an analysis of the early work. Moreover, at every step the connec-tion to his later American work is brought to light wherever possible, eitherwithin the analysis itself or in the notes. In the epilogue, these various threadsare gathered in an attempt to bring out the relationship between the earlyand the later Strauss. In this way, the reconstruction of the European Straussaims to contribute to identifying and clarifying the core or “unifying center”of his thought.16 As will hopefully become clear, this approach ab ovo pro-duces several valuable insights that are harder to perceive starting from thelater work.

For the same reasons, this cannot be a complete, detailed, and exhaus-tive discussion of Strauss’s complete oeuvre. The main intention of this bookis to acquaint the reader with the principal elements of his thought, and tooffer a number of tools with which to start reading his works. Strauss himselfwrote his interpretations in order to guide the curious and attentive reader tothe works of the great philosophers, theologians, and poets themselves. If thepresent work contributes something to that end, it will have succeeded.

This volume is based on a book originally written and published in Dutch in 2001.17 The State University of New York Press’s (SUNY)offer to publish an English translation gave me the opportunity to thor-oughly revise and enlarge it in the light of new material, both primary andsecondary, that was published in the meantime. This endeavor would nothave succeeded without the help and encouragement of a number of peo-ple to whom I wish to express my gratitude. Joseph Cropsey graciouslygranted me access to the Leo Strauss Papers in the University of ChicagoLibrary. Kenneth Hart Green, editor of SUNY’s series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss, enthusiastically welcomed the project. NathanTarcov, Heinrich Meier, and Mark Lilla, who continued to show interestin my work through the years, provided me with valuable and welcomecomments and advice. Daniel Tanguay generously gave me the benefit of his work as well as of his friendship. Finally, I am indebted to my col-leagues at Tilburg University—Bert van Roermund, Hans Lindahl, andLuigi Corrias—for their unstinting support.


7

CHAPTER 1

“In the Grip of theTheological-Political

Predicament”

The Theological-Political Problem and the Jewish Question

In many respects, 1965 marks a special occasion in the academic career ofLeo Strauss. In that year, two of his earliest books are republished in trans-lation. An American publisher brings out Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, theEnglish translation of his first book, which had originally appeared in Ger-man in 1930. Concurrently, a German publisher issues Hobbes’ politische Wis-senschaft, the German original of a text of 1936, which until then had onlybeen available in English as The Political Philosophy of Hobbes.1 In both cases,something of an old debt is settled. With the first book, Strauss’s English-speaking audience finally gains access to a scholarly debut that was receivedas an important achievement in its day. Conversely, the publication of theoriginal book on Hobbes offers the German readership a further opportunityto get acquainted with his work. Moreover, it provides a belated compensa-tion for the disappointments Strauss had to endure in the 1930s, when hefound no German publisher prepared to print the work of a Jewish scholar.2

As is customary on such occasions, Strauss adds a foreword to bothtexts, in which he looks back at the road traveled and supplies elements of anintellectual biography. Reading these forewords in conjunction, the readercannot fail to be struck by two passages. The preface to Spinoza’s Critique ofReligion begins as follows: “This study . . . was written between the years1925–1928 in Germany. The author was a young Jew, born and raised inGermany, who found himself in the grip of the theological-politicalpredicament.”3 In the foreword to the Hobbes book, Strauss refers to his research on Baruch Spinoza while adding an important declaration: “My

study of Hobbes began in conjunction with an investigation of the origins ofthe critique of the Bible in the seventeenth century, in particular of Spin-oza’s Theologico-Political Treatise . . . Since then the theological-politicalproblem has remained the theme of my investigations.”4

In the case of an exceptionally careful reader and writer like Strauss,any coincidence can safely be ruled out. By dividing a single message overtwo distinct audiences, he not only bridges the two worlds of his native andhis adoptive country, but he also joins two halves of a life devoted to scien-tific research and intersected by a world war. With unusual emphasis, more-over, he points to what he regards as the core and Leitmotiv of his life andwork. In almost four decades, we may infer, the “grip of the theological-political predicament” has not slackened, even though his understanding ofit may have changed, as the shift from “predicament” to “problem” seems toindicate. At any rate, it seems that, by Strauss’s own directions, any attemptto understand his work must focus on “the theological-political problem.”

However, the picture proves to be more intricate. In 1962, presum-ably while composing the preface to the book on Spinoza, Strauss gave alecture at the Hillel House of the University of Chicago. On this occasion,he told his audience, many of whose members were Jewish: “I believe thatI can say without exaggeration that since a very, very early time the maintheme of my reflections has been what is called ‘the Jewish Question’”5 Noless deliberate and no less emphatic than the other two, this statement isapparently directed to yet another audience, and it complicates our initialquestion, what does Strauss mean by “the Jewish Question,” and how is itrelated to the “theological-political problem”? Are they identical, or is theformer rather an instance of the latter? In order to answer these questions,we do well to turn to the beginnings. In the 1920s, the young Strauss wasan adherent of political Zionism who energetically participated in a num-ber of debates concerning what was then called “the Jewish Question”: theconditions, the identity, and the future of the Jews in Europe. At this “very,very early time,” his commitment was marked by a keen interest in the relationship between political and religious-theological issues.

Back to Reality: Emancipation, Assimilation, and Zionism

The historical issues underlying the Jewish Question can be defined withsome accuracy. The term became current during the second half of the nine-teenth century when, following a period of relative quiet and stability, the presence and the place of Jews in Europe was called into question with unprecedented vehemence. In Eastern Europe, thousands of mostly orthodox


Jews were killed or put to flight in violent pogroms. However, the secularizedand assimilated Jews living in the liberal democracies of Western Europe did not remain unaffected either. Notwithstanding their formal equality before the law as citizens, they were put apart once again, in many cases moreintensely than before. What had been known for centuries as rishus, vicious-ness against Jews, had returned in pseudoscientific garb under the name of “anti-Semitism.” Before long, the Jewish Question was put on a par with other great issues of the time, such as the “Social Question” and the“Labor Question.”

Profound disillusionment with the failure of liberal democracy pushedmany assimilated Jews into a crisis. While assimilation proved unable to liveup to its promises—to end discrimination and promote legal and socialequality—doubts regarding its effectiveness produced a feeling of powerless-ness. The Jewish individual who had assimilated in order to escape what thepoet Heinrich Heine had called “das dunkle Weh,” the “dark pain” or “darkmisfortune” of being a Jew, found himself in a situation hardly more enviableand hardly less precarious.6 Confronted with the persistence of discrimina-tion, he had to do without the resilience of his ancestors, who had been ableto invoke and emulate a glorious and heroic Jewish past. The wealth of thispast, the meaning it had acquired in the course of long and profound suffer-ing, had been discounted by assimilation in a potentially endless historicalprogress.7 The option of a liberal, secularized modernity thus appeared as apainfully superficial and unsatisfying solution. For this reason, many assimi-lated Jews engaged in active political self-organization. By constructing theirown state, they aimed to build a safe haven where physical and spiritual per-secution and repression would come to an end, if necessary by enforcingrecognition. The Zionist movement originated when, at the end of the nine-teenth century, the passage of large groups of Jewish refugees from EasternEurope, fleeing the violence of the pogroms, rekindled the dream of a returnto Palestine among many West European Jews.8

Initially, however, the efforts of the small and insular Zionist societies—orthodox as well as assimilated—to aid the so-called Ostjuden in building anew life were hardly organized or coordinated, and of a humanitarian andphilanthropic rather than a political nature. For most German Zionists, theidea of a Jewish nation was at best a beautiful dream that in no way affectedtheir loyalty to the German state. Only by the turn of the century did Zion-ism evolve into a full-blown Jewish nationalism. With his classic pamphletThe Jewish State (Der Judenstaat, 1896), the Austrian journalist and writerTheodor Herzl attempted to unify and focus the dormant and dispersedZionist ambitions, giving them a markedly political turn. Deeply impressed by

“IN THE GRIP OF THE THEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL PREDICAMENT” 9

the Russian pogroms as well as by the Dreyfus Affair in France, Herzl announced the failure of emancipation and assimilation: in spite of their exalted promises, they had proved unable to end the discrimination of Jews.Banishing anti-Jewish sentiments to the margins of society had, in fact, allowed them to proliferate and intensify.9 In the face of renewed anti-Semitism, assimilation proved to be powerless and blind, insofar as it deniedor trivialized the gravity of the situation. In Herzl’s view, assimilation provedto be merely a continuation of galut, the Jewish exile, and thus also of the dis-comfort and the dangers that accompanied it.

Instead of emancipation from without, promoted and organized bythe European nation states, Herzl advocated the self-emancipation of theJewish people. This goal could be realized only by political means, he ar-gued: any legal or social solution was precluded a priori by the problems in-herent in liberalism, so that the Jews had no other recourse than to developinto a united and organized power.10 Moreover, Herzl’s strictly politicalapproach to the Jewish Question implied that he attached no primary im-portance to Jewish language, culture, tradition, or even religion in the es-tablishment of a Jewish state. In reaction, other currents within Zionismemerged that sought to correct and remedy this putative one-sidedness.Thus, motivated by what it saw as political Zionism’s neglect of the Jewishtradition, so-called cultural Zionism emerged. Its founder, the writer AhadHa’am, argued that a purely political approach to the Jewish Question wasuntenable, insofar as the pursuit of a Jewish state as such implied a decisiveconcession to the Jewish tradition. According to Ahad Ha’am, a Jewish na-tion could not exist if it did not make room for a proper Jewish nationalculture, the so-called Jewish content (Jüdische Inhalte) in which Jewish reli-gious experience expressed itself.

Going beyond cultural Zionism, religious Zionism, founded in 1902,argued that the nationalist struggle could only be a means to the religiousend of reuniting the Jewish people under the Torah, the revealed law. Forthis reason, it opposed the approach of both political and cultural Zionism.Finally, opposed to Zionism in all its varieties was Jewish neoorthodoxy.Founded by Samson Raphael Hirsch at the end of the nineteenth centuryand led in the 1920s by his grandson Isaac Breuer, it anathemized Zionismas apikorsuth, or Epicureanism, a synonym for apostasy, atheism, and theself-centered pursuit of this-worldly comfort.

In spite of disagreement and opposition, Herzl managed to play offagainst each other the Jewish interests and those of the international powerswith an exceptional feeling for diplomacy and an acute political instinct, insuch a way that Jewish unity became a possibility, if not a reality. In this way,


he ushered in a second phase in which Zionism, albeit not without great ef-fort, gradually gathered political momentum. The First World War did notso much interrupt this process as subject it to a profound revision. As JehudaReinharz argues in his study of the German Zionist movement, the warthrew Zionism back on itself and forced it to reflect on its own foundationsand presuppositions, at a point in time when discord between different Zion-ist groups seemed to have been more or less overcome. In the light of thesenew conditions, Herzl’s diplomatic approach turned out to be as insufficientas the initial philanthropy. Heated debates erupted again, and, as Reinharzpoints out, “they required new, far-reaching commitments of every Zionist,as well as a revision of his identity as a Jewish nationalist living in Ger-many.”11 As a result of their experiences in Germany as well as abroad, youngZionists found themselves in a tangled web of conflicting claims: the politi-cal pursuit of a Jewish state, the requirements of German citizenship, the roleof the Jewish tradition, and the influence of German culture.

“God and Politics”

This third phase of Zionism, its postwar introspection, is the stage onwhich Leo Strauss, a young graduate in philosophy, makes his first appear-ance. Raised in an orthodox family, he was, in his own words, “converted tosimple, straightforward political Zionism” at the age of seventeen.12 As anactive but by no means uncritical member of a Zionist student organiza-tion, Strauss espoused the strictly secular political approach advocated byHerzl.13 Thus, one of his earliest writings begins with the following pro-grammatic assertion: “It is the view of political Zionism that the plight ofthe Jews can only be alleviated by the establishment of a Jewish state, by theconsolidation of the power of Jewish individuals into the Jewish power ofthe people.”14 In other writings of the same period, Strauss makes clearthat this endeavor is essentially and irrevocably modern. It is a struggle toend Jewish exile predicated on the destruction of its religious foundations:

Political Zionism has repeatedly characterized itself as the will tonormalize the existence of the Jewish people, to normalize the Jewishpeople . . . In truth, the presupposition of the Zionist will to normal-ization, that is, the Zionist negation of galut, is the conviction that“the power of religion has been broken.”15

Political Zionism’s claim to legitimacy vis-à-vis contemporary Jews is thus ultimately founded on the success of the critique of religion in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Strauss explains that:


when Europe criticized itself, that is, its Christianity, it eo ipso criti-cized Judaism. That this critique made an impact on the Jewish con-text, is illustrated historically by the fact that the Jewish tradition,insofar as it was not able to reconstruct itself with regard to this cri-tique, succumbed to the European attack. Here lies the decisive causeof what is known as assimilation, which therefore is Jewishly legiti-mate also from this perspective.16

As a necessary consequence, Strauss points out, “Political Zionism,wishing to ground itself radically, must ground itself in unbelief (sich alsungläubig begründen).”17 Elsewhere, he formulates this implication in a waythat leaves nothing to be desired in the way of clarity: “Political Zionism isthe organization of unbelief within Judaism; it is the attempt to organizethe Jewish people on the basis of unbelief.”18 This sober, uncompromisingunderstanding of political Zionism is characteristic of the position Strausstakes in the postwar debates. First, it leads him to challenge Herzl’s viewthat assimilation is merely a continuation of Jewish exile, and that only po-litical Zionism can make a radical break with this past.19 Rather, he argues,this break can be shown to precede both assimilation and Zionism, insofaras both are essentially opposed to the “lack of reality” (Entwirklichtheit) ofthe exile. Under galut, Jewish existence was literally “abnormal”: it stoodoutside the historical process in which the other nations faced each other aspolitical entities. By the same token, the unity and cohesion of the Jewishpeople in the galut were based on the complete absence of a political cen-ter. Deprived of the natural conditions of existence, the vitality of the Jew-ish people was sustained and nourished only by faith in divine providence,but precisely this faith precluded normal political action. Thus, the essenceof galut consists in the fact that “it provides the Jewish people with a maximalpossibility of existence by means of a minimum of normality.”20

In the long run, however, this unreal, apolitical existence proved tobe untenable, Strauss continues. The modern critique of religion and itspolitical correlate, the liberal political thought of the French Revolution,offered a way out. Among other things, the secular separation of churchand state offered Jews the opportunity to join the “normal” historical, eco-nomic, social, and political reality of the non-Jewish world.21 Initially, this“return to reality” (Einwirklichung) occurred on the individual level, whenindividual Jews detached themselves from Jewish faith and tradition, andparticipated actively in non-Jewish life. When the achievements of thisprocess were subsequently called into question both by Jews and non-Jewsalike, it became apparent that the return to reality could be successful onlyto the extent that it was undertaken on a collective, political level.


Hence, assimilation and political Zionism are not opposed, Straussholds. They are two distinct but complementary phases within the sameprocess of the return to reality. What is more, political Zionism wouldnever have been possible without assimilation and its attendant contactwith European culture. Assimilation primarily meant that religious matterswere relegated from the public sphere to the private sphere. This created aspace in which assimilated Jews could submit to a profound “Germaniza-tion” (Eindeutschung), an immersion in German culture and its characteris-tic blend of historical consciousness and nationalism.22 Therefore, Straussasserts, political Zionism is essentially a modern movement, a child of thenineteenth century, just as assimilation was a child of the eighteenth.23

More importantly, however, Strauss’s understanding of politicalZionism as essentially based on unbelief leads to a sharp critique of othercontemporary currents within Zionism that nevertheless attempt to inte-grate religion in their pursuit of a Jewish state. Thus, he repeatedly attackscultural Zionism, and its attempts to reintegrate the Jewish content. Straussfirmly rejects this approach on two grounds:

This “content” cannot simply be adopted, not only because the con-tent is conditioned by, and supportive of galut and therefore endan-gers our Zionism but also because inherent in this content asreligious content is a definite claim to truth that is not satisfied by thefulfillment of national demands.24

At the core of this claim to truth, he goes on to explain, is the inde-pendent existence of God, which cannot be reduced to mere human cultureor human experience: “That religion deals first with ‘God’ and not with thehuman being, that this conception is the great legacy of precisely the Jew-ish past—this our ancestors have handed down to us, and this we wish tohold on to honestly and clearly.”25 By reducing this legacy to mere culture,cultural Zionism proves to be based on modern atheism, in spite of its ownclaims to the contrary.

In his autobiographical prefaces, Strauss spells out his critique ofcultural Zionism in more detail. As he argues there, cultural Zionism’s al-leged return to Jewish tradition was insincere and bound to fail, since itwas based on a profound modification of the Jewish tradition. Inspired bythe thought of German Idealist thinkers like G. W. F. Hegel and JohannGottlieb Fichte, cultural Zionism understood the Jewish tradition as “highculture” (Hochkultur), the product of the Jewish “folk spirit” (Volksgeist). Indoing so, however, it departed from the tradition’s self-understanding,which traced the origin of Jewish culture not to a human, but to a divine


act. According to the tradition, the people of Israel were distinguishedfrom all other peoples by divine election through receiving the revealedlaw. As a result, the Jewish people is what it is by dint of something thatcannot be reduced to the “folk spirit,” national culture, or national con-sciousness. Strauss observes:

And if you take these things with a minimum of respect or seriousness,you must say that they were not meant to be products of the Jewishmind. They were meant to be ultimately “from Heaven” and this is thecrux of the matter: Judaism cannot be understood as a culture. . . .Thesubstance is not culture, but divine revelation.26

If cultural Zionism wanted to remain consistent in its objections topolitical Zionism, it had no choice but to transform itself into religiousZionism, Strauss asserts. This, however, implied a profound change in pri-orities: “when religious Zionism understands itself, it is in the first placeJewish faith and only secondarily Zionism.”27 If religion prevails over po-litical concerns, the reconstitution of the Jewish state is no longer exclu-sively nor essentially a matter of human intervention, but it becomesdependent on the coming of the Messiah, who will inaugurate tikkun, thegreat restoration. Religious Zionism is based on the conviction that theJewish Question is an absolute problem, the result of a divine dispensation.From this perspective, the difficulties of the “unreal” life in exile are an in-alienable part of a divine providence unfathomable to man. They are signsthat indicate the Jewish people have been elected by the creator to assumethe sufferings of the world and to receive and spread ultimate salvation.Since these ordeals are imposed by a superhuman power, they can be endedonly by that same power. Every attempt to achieve this goal by merelyhuman means must therefore be rejected as blasphemous and false. Ac-cording to religious Zionism, the insolubility of the Jewish Question is thecore of Jewish identity. The establishment of the state of Israel may seemto be the end, but it is, in fact, a continuation by other means of the galut,a relative solution to what is, in fact, an absolute problem.

Strauss’s uncompromising view of political Zionism, then, proves tobe matched by a no less radical understanding of religion. In his early writ-ings, he repeatedly insists on their mutual incompatibility, while forcefullydismissing any attempt at synthesis and integration as jeopardizing theZionist cause. For this reason, he criticizes not only cultural Zionism butalso religious Zionism and even the anti-Zionism of Jewish neoorthodoxy.From the neoorthodox perspective, Zionists were apostates who had been


unable to resist the temptations of modern European culture, and who hadabandoned religious faith in divine providence for the sake of a secular trustin progress and human autonomy. In this way, neoorthodoxy argued, Zion-ism had surrendered Judaism to the power, the discretion and the mutualquarrels of the modern nation states and undermined Jewish resilience. Inits view, the failure of assimilation proved that Jews could find salvation onlyin theocracy, faith, and obedience to the revealed Law. Instead of trying tofind a place among the other nations, the Jews ought to remain in exile,since the latter could be truly ended only by the coming of the Messiah. Theviolence of the goyim or non-Jews had to be endured resignedly, in theknowledge that justice ultimately was on the side of the Jewish people.

Strauss forcefully dismisses these accusations as well as the view under-lying them. In his rejoinder, he charges his opponents with dangerous polit-ical naïveté as well as with intellectual dishonesty. To begin with, he arguesthat neoorthodoxy’s angry polemic against Zionism hardly contributes to alleviating the predicament of German Jews.28 Second, its simplistic presen-tation of the relationship between the Jewish people and the other peoples asa matter of “justice against injustice” constitutes a serious obstacle to reach-ing a viable political balance of powers. Third, he objects to the fact that, inspite of its antipolitical discourse, neoorthodoxy nevertheless deploys a polit-ical strategy that is not devoid of demagoguery: its defense of theocracy mo-bilizes the fundamental religious premises primarily because of their politicalutility, not because of their meaning and content.

According to Strauss, religious neoorthodoxy deploys a purely conse-quentialist argument. It preaches faith and obedience to Mosaic law by sys-tematically emphasizing their salutary consequences, such as nationalunity, social cohesion, the fulfillment of psychological needs, or the evenforce of habit. If the law is upheld for these reasons, it argues, faith in thefundamental religious dogmas is wont to follow. For Strauss, this viewamounts to an outright reversal of priorities. The only valid reason for obe-dience to the law, he rejoins, is the existence of God and the authority ofMosaic revelation.29 If the law is to be obeyed, it is to be obeyed because itis the will of God, revealed by him directly and miraculously to Moses, andnot because obedience has salutary consequences. By giving precedence tohuman concerns over God and the Torah, neoorthodoxy forgets “that re-ligion deals first with ‘God’ and not with the human being.” The view thatthe deeper meaning of the law consists in its “therapeutic” effects nullifiesthe seriousness of faith, and culminates in rigid dogmatism. Strauss’s dis-missal is particularly scathing: “For the sake of such a ‘deeper’ meaning ofthe Law one swallows the dogmas whole, unchewed, like pills. One asserts


that that without inspiration the Law would lose its binding force, and oneforgets that one doesn’t base it on inspiration at all.”30

If neoorthodoxy were to be consistent, it would recognize that “thequestion of God and His revelation must be posed quite simple-mindedlyand honestly, without regard to any actual disadvantages involved.”31 As aresult, it would be compelled to reaffirm in all clarity the traditional Jewishtheological dogmas. In its turn, political Zionism would be able to expressits fundamental objections and reservations regarding the dogmas. At thesame time, it would be able to show its loyalty to the great heritage of theJewish past. Thus, it would finally come to light that political Zionism doesnot conduct “a battle against the rule of the Torah of God,” as neoortho-doxy claims, but merely wants to maintain a critical distance with regard toreligion, Strauss holds. This critical distance is ultimately rooted in “the factthat, as a result of the European critique, the dogmatic presuppositions ofOrthodoxy have been recognized as questionable.”32 As a result, Strauss ar-gues, political Zionism necessarily must embrace liberalism: “the Zionism Iwish to characterize as primarily political Zionism is liberal, that is, it rejectsthe absolute submission to the Law and instead makes individual acceptanceof traditional contents dependent on one’s own deliberation.”33

As Strauss himself observed: “when religious Zionism understands itself, it is in the first place Jewish faith and only secondarily Zionism.”34

Neoorthodoxy takes this argument one step further, asserting that puttingJewish faith first requires abandoning Zionism. As a result, it cannot regardthe factual, historical establishment of the state of Israel as tikkun, butmerely as a phase—albeit an important one—in the galut: “The establish-ment of the state of Israel is the most profound modification of the galutwhich has occurred, but it is not the end of the galut: in the religious sense,the state of Israel is a part of the galut.”35 Even more than for religiousZionism, for neoorthodoxy the Jewish Question is an absolute problem, atoken of divine election. From this perspective, the establishment of thestate of Israel can never be more than a relative solution that leaves intactthe absolute character of the theological-political problem.

However, Strauss’s effort to understand rigorously both politicalZionism and Jewish religion reveals a profound tension. Although he cau-tions that the Jewish content endangers political Zionism, he neverthelessasserts that this content contains a specific ancestral legacy he wishes to holdon to “clearly and honestly,” even while admitting that political Zionismcannot satisfy the claim to truth that inhabits this legacy. Underlying theseconcerns, a fundamental problem becomes visible. The process of returningto reality ultimately aims at a reversal of the specific relationship between


conditions of existence and normality that characterizes life under galut. Onthe one hand, it strives toward a maximum of normality: the Jewish peoplemust leave the ahistorical and apolitical isolation upheld by faith in a divinepromise, and act as a people among other peoples. On the other hand, how-ever, this means that the conditions of existence of the Jewish people as aspecifically Jewish people are minimized. Normalization, understood as be-coming historical and political, entails that certain distinctive characteristicsof Jewish identity are relinquished, such as faith in divine election, in Mosaicrevelation, and in the coming of the Messiah. The faith-based internal co-hesion of the Jewish people is lost, and as a result the Jewish identity of theremaining individuals becomes deeply problematic. Differently stated: withthe descent of the Luftvolk to the solid ground of historical and political nor-mality, the survival of Judaism as Judaism is put at risk.36

Political Zionism, Strauss observes, does not counteract the “de-Judaiz-ing” (entjudende) tendencies of assimilation—as Herzl hoped it would—but itactually sustains them.37 As a result, political Zionism is faced with a dilemma.On the one hand, it derives its legitimacy from the conscious and radical breakwith the world of galut and with the religious foundations of the Jewish tradi-tion. On the other hand, insofar as it claims the title of “Zionism,” it cannotavoid referring to that same tradition. Precisely this claim to be Zionism—evenif it is political Zionism—shows that Jewish nationalism has ties to traditionalhopes that it can never completely sever without compromising its name.38

Strauss formulates this dilemma concisely with reference to the process of returning to reality:

This is precisely our present-day dilemma, namely, that . . . this pathhas deviated, and has had to deviate, from the content that alone couldfulfill this reality; for the attitude that held this content together likean iron ring, the spirit that was alive in them, was the spirit of galut.39

Political Zionism’s appeal to the “will” of the Jewish people ultimatelyproves to beg the question. Mere normalization, Strauss notes, is notenough: “‘A people like all other peoples’ cannot be the program of self-critical Zionism.”40 Clearly, this puts him in a very difficult position. On theone hand, the Jewish people cannot survive without politics: the closed worldof faith and galut has been definitely and irretrievably destroyed by modernscience and modern politics. On the other hand, it cannot survive with pol-itics alone: its legacy continues to emit a claim that is constitutive of Jewishidentity and thus cannot be ignored.41 This claim, however, inevitablypoints back to religion, which, properly understood, is apolitical and even


excludes politics. Jacob Klein, one of his oldest friends, aptly summed up the“theological-political predicament” in which the young Strauss found him-self: “His primary interests were two questions: one, the question of God;and two, the question of politics.”42 As his early writings show, his vigorousattempts to keep the two questions separate only reveal a more profound in-terrelatedness. That Strauss was aware of this is borne out by the fact that inhis early writings, he explores the possibilities of doing justice to both theprinciples of modern science and modern politics and the demands of theJewish legacy, without resorting to halfhearted and inconsistent compro-mises or syntheses.

Biblical Politics, Biblical Science, and the New Theology

Simply put, Strauss searches for ways of reading the Bible freed from tradi-tional and dogmatic elements, and in conformity with the demands ofmodern science. This combination, he hopes, will enable political Zionismto relate to the great legacy of the Jewish past without compromising itssecular and political orientation. This approach requires rejecting all thetheological presuppositions traditionally involved in explaining the historyof the Jewish people, Strauss asserts. In taking this position, he sides withthe renowned historian Simon Dubnow, whose monumental history of Ju-daism appears in the course of the 1920s and 1930s.43 Interpreting earlyJewish history, Dubnow attempts to explain the events that are related inthe Bible solely in terms of natural, political, economic, and cultural fac-tors. Although he is very critical of many aspects of Dubnow’s approach,Strauss generally agrees with the latter’s sober, political perspective. Toboot, he adds, the Bible itself can be seen to contain several natural, causalexplanations that support this perspective:

Thus, the biblical sources themselves give us the possibility of arriv-ing at a—perhaps not deep, but nevertheless accurate—conception ofthe beginnings of our people. We are thereby urged to assume thatthe theological conception of these beginnings may derive from atime in which there was no longer any political life, and therefore alsono longer any political understanding.44

In this pragmatic perspective, the traditional, theological reading of theBible must be considered as the product of the particular conditions of galut,in which the Jewish people were cut off from historical and political reality.Therein lies the specific value of Dubnow’s approach for political Zionism,Strauss points out. It is the means par excellence to promote the political


awareness of modern Judaism. Moreover, by deriving this purely political account from the Bible itself, it disarms Zionism’s opponents, who continueto appeal to the traditional reading.45

But, in that case, what happens to religion? According to Strauss, Dub-now’s work is rooted in the modern critique of religion, and as such it is anindispensable aid for political Zionism. However, as he also notes, Dubnow’sresistance to the traditional reading of the Bible is primarily aimed againstwhat he holds to be the central Jewish dogma: the existence and providenceof God in relationship to Jewish history. In Dubnow’s reading, there is noplace for God as a “real presence,” as a provident, wrathful, and just creator:at the most, God is an object, a projection of human experience. Under whatconditions, then, can political Zionism nevertheless address the question re-garding God and revelation, as Strauss demands? And what happens to therecognition of the primacy of God that is at the core of the Jewish legacy?Isn’t it simply excluded by Dubnow’s purely pragmatic and causal approachto biblical history?

It seems we are back at the old clash between the critique of religionand science on the one hand and religion on the other. This, however, isnot the case, Strauss holds. In his view, the relationship between the twohas changed since the seventeenth century. Indeed, initially there was con-flict: “There was a time, not so long ago, when the two powers, traditionand science, did not coexist peacefully on parallel planes, with no points ofcontact, but engaged in a life-and-death struggle for hegemony on the sin-gle plane of the ‘truth.’”46 As Strauss emphasizes again, this struggle wasdecided in favor of the critique of religion and of science. They confrontedreligion with the alternative: either adapt to the requirements of scienceand critique, or face ruin. However, he continues, the adaptation religionsubmitted to was not so much its own merit as the consequence of the factthat eventually the critique began to criticize itself. The Enlightenment’sreflexive turn, which is associated with Immanuel Kant, set limits to reason,and thus created new space for religion.

The latter, nevertheless, paid a high price for this commodity: it wascompelled to abandon its claim to transcendence and to truth. The place oftranscendence was taken by the transcendental constitution of religiousconsciousness as a necessary postulate of reason. In the long run, however,it became apparent that “an idealistically reinterpreted religion may per-haps be the most amusing thing in the world, it can in any case no longerbe religion.”47 Reduced to a mere postulate, religion could be related tovarious aspects of human experience, but without the claim to transcen-dence, it was cut off from the source that nourished and sustained it. At the


end of this development, it became necessary to address this claim anew,this time with regard to the conditions that had been created by the cri-tique of religion and its self-critique. “In a fundamentally different intel-lectual situation, the problem of theology had to be posed anew, as one thatcould be dealt with scientifically.”48

In this way, Strauss brings to light the historical and intellectual back-ground of the problem he himself is struggling with, as it was adumbratedearlier herein: how to do justice to the ancestral Jewish legacy and to the cri-teria of modernity. Meeting this challenge seems to depend on the possi-bility of developing a scientific approach to the problem of theology. As becomes apparent from Strauss’s early writings, such an approach is, in fact, already available. Not without some enthusiasm, he discusses the so-callednew theology that emerges in this period. Challenged by the reflexive turn of the Enlightenment, this new theology points to the shortcomings of the modern historical-critical reading of the Bible, and attempts to take thefundamental claims of religion seriously again. Protestant authors such asKarl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and Rudolf Otto integrate elements of neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and existentialism in a postcritical exegesis ofthe Bible, in order to return to the roots of religion. In the case of Barth, thisleads to the development of a form of neoorthodoxy, a reflexive return withinthe folds of tradition, reconnecting with the sources of religious experience.

In his autobiographical writings, Strauss discusses more amply thehistorical background of the “return movement” (Rückkehrbewegung) as itdeveloped within Judaism. With its watchword t’shuvah, Hebrew for both“return” and “penitence,” it addressed assimilated Jews alienated from thetradition by their upbringing and disappointed in the promises of liberaldemocracy. Its foundations were laid by Hermann Cohen, whose elabora-tion of neo-Kantianism had led him back to Judaism.49 Cohen’s impulsewas taken up and developed by two of the most important Jewish thinkersof the twentieth century: Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber. Each in hisway contributed to what the young Strauss calls “the reconstruction of tra-ditional theology in a situation created by the critique of tradition.”50

The new Jewish theology rejected the way in which the so-called mod-erate Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had tried to salvageJudaism after the attack of the first wave of the radical Enlightenment. Themoderates, led by Moses Mendelssohn, had argued that although the radicalEnlightenment was justified in refuting the external elements of faith in revelation—such as the authority of oral and written tradition, as well as miracles—this did not mean that its internal elements had also been refuted.The latter had retained their validity, and had proven impervious to the sci-


entific and historical critique. Inspired by Kantianism and German Idealism,the moderate Enlightenment no longer understood the fundamental tenetsof Judaism against the background of an external and material relationshipbetween God and the world. Rather, it “internalized” these tenets as postu-lates of reason. Thus, revelation was no longer regarded as a factum brutumsurpassing human reason, but it was transformed into a transcendental “reli-gious a priori.” Even God himself did not escape this reduction: his externalpower over the world vanished in favor of the authority of a regulative idea.

According to the return movement, this internalization did moreharm than good to Judaism, allowing its contents to evaporate into shad-owy precepts without any binding character. The idealist approach liqui-dated not only the externality of the tradition, but also the immediatehuman experience of God. With his philosophy of the “I and Thou” (Ichund Du), Buber attempted to restore this experience. Against the moderateEnlightenment, he argued that God and revelation are no mere ideas thatguide human reason. On the contrary, the divine can only be experiencedas an irruption of the absolute that is completely at odds with all humanpursuits, expectations, and desires. It has the character of a compelling,anomalistic call, to which man must respond in an unconditional love forGod in order to learn to recognize and love his fellow man.

Rosenzweig added to Buber’s contribution by pointing out that theindividual rediscovery of the immediate experience of God did not sufficeto warrant a return to tradition. It was also necessary to be attentive to thetraces of this experience that are to be found in the Bible. From his studyHegel and the State, Rosenzweig concluded that philosophy in its ultimateform—the Hegelian system—had failed.51 All arguments the philosophictradition had mustered against revelation had missed their mark. For thisreason, he declared the “old thinking” bankrupt and advocated a “newthinking” (neues Denken). Rejecting the idealist quest for the conditions ofpossibility of experience, he advocated a “radical empiricism” based on theimmediate and intuitive experience of three irreducible entities: God, man,and the world. Since it focused on experience, the new thinking was free ofthe prejudices and reductionisms of traditional philosophy, Rosenzweig ar-gued. For this reason, it was well equipped to guide and accompany the re-turn to Judaism.

According to the young Strauss, the new theology is able to realignscience and religion in a way that allows both to assert themselves withoutcompromise, and that permits a fertile interaction. In his early writings heappeals to Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Otto in particular. From Cohen,founder of Marburg neo-Kantianism, he borrows the notion that a rational


and scientific critique of religion is already available in principle within religion itself. As Cohen argues, the founders of Jewish and Christianmonotheism, the biblical prophets, waged a permanent battle against thefolk religion of their times. They opposed the mythical belief in localdeities, which was based on terror, by invoking the infinitely greater andmore terrifying omnipotence of God. In opposing this mythical order, theyevinced a critical rationalism that is akin to the philosophical critique ofmyth and religion. Theology, which transmits and interprets the legacy ofthe prophets, is thus faced with the task of conserving and keeping this crit-ical rationality alive. In Strauss’s words: “In the final analysis, scientific cri-tique of religion is an immanent critique. It exists already where the term‘science’ cannot yet be spoken of in the Scholastic sense. The theologiansonly continue what the prophets had begun.”52

The latter holds no less for the new theology. The fact that it usesmodern scientific and philosophic insights in no way signifies that it vio-lates religion, Strauss argues together with Cohen. On the contrary, theseinsights support, conserve, and activate the critical potential inherent in re-ligion. In this way, it also becomes possible to take seriously again the foun-dations of the Jewish religion: insofar as they too express the originalrationalism of the prophets, they can be incorporated in a modern philo-sophical system without being deformed or evacuated. Cohen’s achieve-ment, moreover, is counterbalanced and complemented by the work ofRudolf Otto. In his groundbreaking study The Holy, Otto firmly rejects thescience of religion of the Enlightenment and its Romantic heirs.53 Againstthe naturalist account of religion as well as against the transcendental con-stitution of religious consciousness, he reminds theology of its propername: its primary subject is not the world, nor man nor religious experi-ence, but God in his transcendence.54 Otto thus understands divine tran-scendence radically, independently of man and the world. The holy is thenumen, the radically Other that in its mysterious strangeness instills fearbecause it escapes human control. It is Otto’s great merit, Strauss argues,that he deliberately develops his thesis with a view to the modern context:“Otto operates with categories that are useful for the reconstruction of tra-ditional theology in a situation created by the critique of tradition.”55 Thespecifically modern character of Otto’s theology becomes apparent in hisidentification of the numinous with the irrational, as the central character-istic of the religious object:

In an earlier day, in a world filled by the irrational moment of religion,it was necessary for theology to achieve recognition for the legitimacy


of the rational. Today, in a spiritual reality dominated by ratio, it is theoffice of theology to bring to life for our era “the irrational in the ideaof the Divine” through the medium of the theoretical consciousness.56

The fact that transcendence is equated with the irrational does not pre-clude a rational, scientific theology, Strauss argues. Rather to the contrary:precisely because he draws attention to the irrational, Otto is compelled toreaffirm the place and the role of rationality. This he does by revisiting themedieval doctrine of attributes, the characteristics ascribed to God by man.By understanding the irrational as the bearer of rational attributes, Otto re-habilitates the inherent rationality of human speech about God. For this rea-son, Strauss stresses, his theology is particularly valuable for Judaism,especially with regard to an adequate relationship to its biblical and ritual tra-dition. This tradition, he argues, “makes available to us the most perfect ex-pression that the substance of the religious object could possibly find ‘inhuman language.’”57 Otto’s postcritical theology may thus enable modernJews to read the Bible anew, as a testament of transcendence. Aided by thereconstituted doctrine of attributes, moreover, it allows them to trace the ra-tionality underlying the traditional conception of God.

Just as Cohen’s theology makes it possible to integrate traditionalJewish content within a modern philosophical and scientific framework,Otto’s work enables us to honor the foundations of the Jewish religionwithout forsaking the legacy of the European critique of religion. In thissense, the new theology of Cohen and Otto is the necessary supplement to Dubnow’s critical reading of biblical history, aimed at promoting thepolitical awareness of modern Jews. Combined, they constitute the meansby which political Zionism can relate to the Jewish tradition in a way thatmeets the criteria of modernity. Politics and theology each receive theirdue against a common postcritical background: this, we can infer, is the solution Strauss tries to develop in his first publications for the JewishQuestion, understood as a theological-political problem.

Conspicuous in Strauss’s youthful interest in the new theology is thatit attaches far greater importance to Hermann Cohen than to either FranzRosenzweig or Martin Buber, even though the latter two had eclipsedCohen in the 1920s. Presumably, Strauss judged Cohen’s thought to bemore original and more akin to his own radical understanding of religion.This, at any rate, is what we can infer from his later autobiographical remi-niscences. As he explains there, he found that none of the thinkers of t’shu-vah truly succeeded in finding a way back: either there was no genuinereturn, or what was arrived at was not Jewish religion. The latter reproach


is aimed especially against Buber’s work. Because Buber gives priority to theimmediate experience of God, biblical texts are no more than the human ex-pression or interpretation of a divine call that is absolute, speechless, and lit-erally “inhuman.” Moreover, Buber generalizes this characteristic byregarding the various world religions as different interpretations or expres-sions of this experience. In his view, no interpretation is better than anyother in capturing and expressing the experience of absolute alterity. As aresult, Strauss observes, not only Buber’s own philosophy of “I and Thou”but Judaism as well is reduced to being a mere interpretation. In this way,however, Buber loses sight of the specificity of Judaism. For instance, heone-sidedly emphasizes the tremendum-character of the experience of thedivine. As a result, faith becomes an attitude characterized by the total ab-sence of support, when expectation abides in “the opened abyss of the finalinsecurity,” the terrifying moment of what Buber calls “the eclipse of God”(Gottesfinsternis).58 Thus, he forgets that the Jewish prophets do not only ex-press their experience of the divine in terrifying abyssal visions. They alsooffer comforting predictions of the ultimate victory of divine justice andmessianic restoration, and thus an absolute certainty.

By concentrating exclusively on the experience of the divine, more-over, Buber neglects another aspect of Jewish tradition, Strauss finds. Oneof the central claims of traditional Judaism is that the fate of the Jewsevinces a mysterious and privileged relationship to the absolute. This rela-tionship is not regarded as one of many possible interpretations, but as theresult of an indubitable divine promise. Buber was unable to take this claimseriously, at least any more seriously than similar claims of other religions.As a result of his single-minded focus on the experience of the divine, herefused to have his faith in revelation “tainted” by any orthodoxy, attempt-ing to revive Judaism by concentrating on elements traditionally held to besecondary, such as Hasidic tales. Regarding the primary elements, he con-tinued to harbor strong reservations.

According to Strauss, similar reservations attached to Rosenzweig’sconcept of t’shuvah. In his case as well, the medium of return proved to bemore important than the destination. According to Rosenzweig, return totradition by means of “a leap of faith” was both dangerous and bound tofail. On the basis of his radical empiricism, he argued that a successful at-tempt to return had to take as focal point the actual experience of the alien-ated modern Jew. Although Strauss agrees with this focus, he draws adifferent conclusion from it: if experience is indeed the starting point, themodern Jew has no other choice than to leap back into faith or, more pre-cisely, into the revealed law:


[W ]hen speaking of the Jewish experience, one must start from whatis primary or authoritative for the Jewish consciousness, and notfrom what is the primary condition of possibility of the Jewish expe-rience: one must start from God’s Law, the Torah, and not from theJewish nation.59

According to Strauss, Rosenzweig was unable to meet his own re-quirements. His concept of “experience” remained indebted to the modernconcept of the individual, which originated in opposition to the traditionalreligious understanding. In the light of the latter, his distinction betweenimmediate contemporary experience and what was handed down by tradi-tion had little importance: from the point of view of orthodox faith, expe-rience always takes place within a continuum sustained by the authority ofthe revealed law. An individual’s biography cannot be dissociated fromfaith, since it derives its sense and meaning from faith. For Rosenzweig,however, the revealed law was secondary to the Jewish people: it is theproduct of the common descent of the Jewish people, as it were, a culturaldensification of its turbulent history.

Yet tradition teaches the reverse, Strauss rejoins: according to the Pen-tateuch, the Jewish people were unified as the chosen people only as a resultof the revelation of God’s law. Upholding the primacy of experience there-fore does not require the preliminary affirmation of the national sentimentor the national spirit, but obedience to the law in its entire traditional rigor.On this point, however, Rosenzweig had fundamental reservations. He con-ceived of law and tradition as a reservoir from which the individual coulddraw elements that would assist and guide his return. Strauss strongly objectsto this approach: “The sacred law, as it were the public temple, which was areality, thus becomes a potential, a quarry, or a store-house out of which eachindividual takes the materials for building his private shelter.”60 That this ap-proach is based on an implicit denial of the divine origin is exemplified by theambivalence of Rosenzweig’s neoorthodoxy toward traditional orthodoxy—he always opposed the orthodox legalist approach to the law. In his view, theTorah was a mirror in which the individual’s inner experience of God couldrecognize itself, just as it could recognize itself in other elements of tradition.Concurrently, in his reading of the Bible he emphasized commandmentsover the prohibitions that are central in the orthodox view. Similarly, Rosen-zweig was very reluctant regarding the miracles reported in the Bible. Hisfaith in miracles developed very slowly, always attended and tested by the“new thinking” and its focus on immediate experience. Within orthodoxy,this reluctance is absent, Strauss points out: an omnipotent and inscrutable


creator is an undeniable guarantee for the authenticity of all recorded mira-cles. Every form of doubt is regarded as a weakness of faith, which should beindependent of one’s personal situation.

Rosenzweig’s selective approach and his emphasis on the free individ-ual intercourse with the tradition derived from a historicization of the Torah,conditioned by modern premises like individualism and liberalism. For thisreason, Strauss argues, he was no more able than Buber to accept the rigor-ous externality of the revealed law as a whole. Although both thinkers op-posed the “internalizations” of the moderate Jewish Enlightenment, in factthey carried out a similar transformation. They reconstituted the externalityof revelation in the experience of the tremendum—bypassing the law—in order to reinternalize it as the object of a free individual quest. From theperspective of the latter, the law and other elements of tradition were only asounding board at the disposal of the “homecomers” (Heimkehrer). Thishelps explain why, in his early writings, Strauss maintained a critical distancewith regard to both Rosenzweig and Buber in his attempt to balance post-critical theology and political Zionism.

Quaestio Iuris: The Legacy of Spinoza

The project, however, never gets past this first step, and is never systemat-ically elaborated. After 1925, both Dubnow and the new theologians dis-appear completely from Strauss’s writings, as does the attempt to do justiceto both the Jewish content and political Zionism. What is more, politicalZionism itself gradually recedes into the background. When Straussbroaches the subject again in writing in 1932, he can be seen to be takingleave of his youthful commitment, a process that is officially brought to aconclusion in 1935, as we will see. For all purposes, his initial enterpriseseems to be a closed chapter.

Whence this remarkable change? Why does Strauss abandon his pro-ject even before it has begun to get off the ground? The most importantreason is that gradually its fundamental presupposition has become doubt-ful. This presupposition, it will be remembered, was that the “European cri-tique,” the critique of religion, had effected a profound and irrevocablechange in the situation of Judaism. Its success ushered in the end of galutand the beginning of emancipation and assimilation, initiating a process thateventually would lead to political Zionism on the one hand and the new the-ology on the other. In his contributions to the Zionist self-assessment of the1920s, in his efforts to take religion seriously and in his debates with culturaland religious Zionism as well as with Jewish orthodoxy, Strauss never ceases


to press this point: modern Judaism cannot ignore or escape the legacy ofthe critique of religion, modern science, and modern politics.

This does not mean, however, that he simply sides with “Europe.”When he discusses the way in which Europe effectively and radically af-fected the closed world of galut, he does so with the intention of determin-ing both the point and the scope of this impact as accurately as possible. Inseveral of his early publications, he warns against the uncritical applicationof modern scientific theories to the problems of Judaism. Such attempts, heargues, can only further jeopardize the situation of modern Jews. Instead,one must time and again ask the question, with what right does one trans-fer elements from the European context to the Jewish context? Or, moreemphatically, “Of what concern is Europe to us as Jews!” (Was geht uns alsJuden Europa an! )61 According to Strauss, this Rechtsfrage or quaestio iuris,the question regarding the legitimacy of contact between the two spheres,is nothing less than “the central problem of our spiritual situation.”62

Hence, his answer is actually intended to be restrictive: the success of thecritique of religion is, in fact, the only point on which there has been any le-gitimate contact between Europe and Judaism.

An important implication of this restriction is that the legitimacy ofpolitical Zionism, like that of assimilation, is made essentially dependent onthe pertinence and the legitimacy of the critique of religion, more specifi-cally on the fact that “this critique made an impact on the Jewish context.”63

Precisely this “fact” becomes increasingly doubtful to Strauss in the courseof the 1920s. Apparently, the tension underlying his uncompromising un-derstanding of both political Zionism and Jewish religion became everharder to uphold. To estimate the importance of this event, we do well toturn to the autobiographical preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. As heexplains there, the problems attendant to both Zionism and the new theol-ogy and its qualified return to tradition proved to be of such a magnitudethat he eventually came to wonder “whether an unqualified return to Jew-ish orthodoxy was not both possible and necessary—was not at the sametime the solution to the problem of the Jew lost in the non-Jewish worldand the only course compatible with sheer consistency or intellectual pro-bity.”64 Similarly, in a lecture of 1932, he notes, “The possibility emergedthat European reservations vis-à-vis the Jewish tradition were no longer atall possible and necessary: Judaism in its entirety (das integrale Judentum) ap-peared to become possible again.”65

As the early writings show, however, the young Strauss is not preparedto make this momentous decision without further ado. Before taking thisstep, he considers it his first and foremost duty to revisit the one genuine


obstacle to an unqualified return to orthodoxy, the obstacle that is at thesame time the basis of his own youthful commitment: the critique of reli-gion. What this entails can already be inferred from his very first publica-tion, where he draws attention to “the role Spinoza plays in the formulationof the modern view of the world and the modern view of the state.”66 Forhow else could the critique of religion engage in a “life-and-death strugglefor hegemony on the single plane of the ‘truth’” other than with a TractatusTheologico-Politicus, a theological-political treatise?67 Spinoza was the first toattack the authority of revealed religion by offering a systematic and scien-tific analysis of the Bible in order to disengage theological claims to truthand political claims to power. His critique provided the groundwork for theantireligious attack of the Enlightenment, as well as for the development ofmodern biblical science.68 More importantly, the critical shockwaves of theTheological-Political Treatise also affected the Jewish religion and the ancientvault of the galut.

This does not exhaust Spinoza’s significance for Judaism, however.As Strauss points out, in the final chapters of the Treatise he designed a po-litical model that is generally regarded as a prototype of modern liberal de-mocracy, a secular society based on individual freedom.69 In Spinoza’smodel, citizenship was open to all, and hence also to Jews. On the basis ofhis critique of the Bible, Spinoza had concluded that Mosaic Law was nolonger effective. As a result, nothing could prevent the Jews from aban-doning their old world and participating in European culture.70 In this re-spect, Strauss argues, the Theological-Political Treatise can be regarded as thefounding document of Jewish assimilation:

When what mattered was the justification of the breakup of the Jew-ish tradition and the entry of the Jews into modern Europe, perhapsno better, but certainly no more convenient, reference offered itselfthan the appeal to Spinoza. Who was more suitable for undertakingthe justification of modern Judaism before the tribunal of the Jewishtradition, on the one hand, and before the tribunal of modern Europe,on the other, than Spinoza, who, as was almost universally recognized,was a classical exponent of this Europe?71

But even this does not yet sufficiently capture Spinoza’s importance for modern Judaism, Strauss warns. In the third chapter of the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza wrote of his orthodox Jewish contemporaries: “If thefoundations of their religion did not effeminate their minds, I would certainlybelieve that they will at some time, given the occasion—so changeable arehuman affairs—establish their state again, and that God may elect them


again.”72 With irony bordering on sarcasm, Spinoza intimates that the possi-bility of a restoration of the Jewish state primarily depended on the readinessto forfeit the fundamental principles of Jewish religion, which he held re-sponsible for the precarious isolation of Jews in the first place. The view thatJewish suffering under galut had a supernatural ground, and the strongly rit-ualized way of life based on it, reflected and consolidated a fatal lack of politi-cal organization. According to Spinoza, the Jews had to free themselves fromthe stranglehold of tradition by means of a sober, critical reading of the Bible.

Hence, Strauss observes, the Theological-Political Treatise is the birthcertificate not only of assimilation, but also of political Zionism. In spiteof—or perhaps owing to—his irony, Spinoza was the first to anticipate thepossibility of a purely political solution of the Jewish Question.73 He de-tached the restoration and self-preservation of the Jewish people from itstraditional divine guarantee, and made it entirely dependent on a purelyhuman, political effort.74 As is well known, Spinoza paid a high price for hiscritical position. The orthodox Jewish community of Amsterdam pro-nounced a herem, a ruling of total excommunication, against him, afterwhich he led a solitary and withdrawn existence.

The irony of history, however, seems to have followed that of thephilosopher, who subsequently came to be known as one of the founders,not only of modernity, but also of Jewish modernity. All of the centralcharacteristics of the modern Jewish condition point to Spinoza’s work: notonly the break with tradition and assimilation, but also political Zionismand modern theology ultimately derive their legitimacy from the success ofhis critique of religion. However, Strauss rejoins, the fact that a critique issuccessful does not yet mean that it is justified and well founded. Being vic-torious in a life-and-death struggle does not yet prove that victory was de-served. On the contrary, if on closer examination the critique should proveto be unfounded, to what extent can it be called successful? This questioncan be answered only by means of a careful investigation of the foundationsand the effectiveness of Spinoza’s critique of religion. Only such an inves-tigation can answer the quaestio iuris and thus also the crucial questionwhether an unqualified return to Jewish orthodoxy is imperative. Straussnotes tersely in the autobiographical preface, “Orthodoxy could be re-turned to only if Spinoza was wrong in every respect.”75

With this programmatic assertion, Strauss also indicates how far hehad moved away from the return movement of Buber and Rosenzweig. Themain reason for their inability to return unconditionally under the authorityof the law is that they remained beholden to the basic premises of the En-lightenment, he submits. Rosenzweig’s critique of traditional philosophy was


mainly a rejection of Hegel’s idealist synthesis between religion and Enlight-enment. By rejecting this synthesis, he intended to clear the path for the“new thinking.” According to Strauss, however, this reasoning was insuffi-cient in order to justify a blanket farewell to the “old thinking,” let alone a re-turn to religion:

It was believed that one could dismiss any direct and thematic discus-sion with the Enlightenment, since it was assumed—logically, in thesense of the “overcome” Hegelianism—that with the “overcoming”of Hegelianism one had simultaneously “overcome” the Enlighten-ment which Hegelianism had “transcended.” In truth, however, thecritique of Hegelianism had actually led, in the nature of the case, toa rehabilitation of the Enlightenment.76

In developing their new theology, the advocates of t’shuvah wronglyassumed that a dismissal of the Hegelian synthesis necessarily entails the re-jection of its constitutive parts. Rather, Strauss argues, if one rejects the syn-thesis, both constitutive parts are actually restored and thus also the tensionthat existed between them before they were “sublated.” This means thatboth religion and Enlightenment reappear in their “life-and-death strugglefor hegemony on the one plane of the ‘truth.’”77 In this sense, Buber andRosenzweig were too hasty. The main obstacle to be overcome in order toreturn to Jewish religion in its original sense is not the idealist internaliza-tion but the Enlightenment critique, which had been aimed exclusivelyagainst religion in its rigorous, external sense. For this reason, Strauss con-cludes that although “Jewish theology was resurrected from a deep slumber”by Rosenzweig, his one-sided identification of philosophy with Hegelianismprevented him from advancing to a deeper level, that of the original conflictbetween radical Enlightenment and revealed religion.78 Had he done so,Strauss implies, he would have found that the avowed victory of the formerand the defeat of the latter must be reconsidered. Why occupy oneself witha new theology beholden to Spinoza’s critique of religion, when in fact thiscritique itself is in need of scrutiny? Thus, what began as a contribution to the self-reflection of postwar political Zionism now leads to an inquiryinto the foundations of European and Jewish modernity. As a theological-political problem, the Jewish Question proves to possess a complexity thatrequires us to return to the origins of modernity.


31

CHAPTER 2

The Shadow of Spinoza

Farewell here, no matter where. Conscripts of good will, we’llhave a ferocious philosophy: ignorant of science, wily for comfort:let the world go hang. That’s true progress. Forward—march!

—Rimbaud, Illuminations (“Democracy”)

“A Humanly Incomprehensible Betrayal”

Reviled as a godless heretic in his own time, Spinoza was rehabilitated in the eighteenth century by German philosophy, exalted by nineteenth-century Romanticism, and finally received into the philosophical pantheonin the twentieth century as one of modernity’s founders.1 This process wasnot exclusively Western European; Spinoza’s reputation became firmly es-tablished in the Jewish world as well. According to Strauss, however, theinviolability attendant to this almost canonical status led to a certain neu-trality and even indifference, which constitutes the primary obstacle for anyattempt at a critical reassessment. Fortunately, Strauss points out, this ob-stacle was already cleared away by Hermann Cohen. The founder of neo-Kantianism and the rejuvenator of Jewish theology was also the first tochallenge the modern Jewish veneration of Spinoza.

In an essay of 1910 entitled “Spinoza On State and Religion, Judaismand Christianity” (“Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Chris-tentum”), Cohen launched an unusually fierce attack on Spinoza.2 With theTheological-Political Treatise, he argued, Spinoza had written a tendentious political pamphlet in which he had given free rein to his feelings of hatredand revenge toward the Jews. As the title indicated, the text was a hybrid con-struct aimed at securing the writer’s interests on two separate fronts: religionand politics. On the one hand, Spinoza put his talents as a political writer at

the service of the secular regime of the De Witt brothers, from which he hadreceived a modest stipend. On the other hand, he had tried to placate the or-thodox Christian establishment by discrediting Judaism, developing a criticalreading of the Old Testament that denied Mosaic authority and reduced theold religion to the status of a mere political instrument. The fact that he wasfar less severe with regard to the New Testament, and that he declared hisagreement with Paul’s critique of Mosaic Law, was the proverbial last strawfor Cohen. Speaking of “a humanly incomprehensible betrayal” of Judaism,he castigated Spinoza as a renegade who abused his exceptional intellectualgifts to bolster the anti-Jewish attitude of Christianity. In Cohen’s view, theherem issued by the Amsterdam sanhedrin was fully justified.

This severe judgment marked a turning point in the Jewish receptionof Spinoza.3 In Germany as well as abroad, Cohen enjoyed a brilliant repu-tation as a philosopher, theologian, and Jewish thinker. That a leading lightof modern Judaism castigated one of its “founding fathers” was a remarkableevent. Precisely because of its contentious and untimely character, Strausshails Cohen’s attack as an excellent starting point for his own inquiry. Thisdoes not mean, however, that he adopts Cohen’s view throughout. Rather,he develops his own approach in a critical reading of Cohen’s essay. For, ifhe praises Cohen’s courage in contesting the prevailing view, he also sug-gests that Cohen may have gone too far. In particular, his “biographical”reading of the Theological-Political Treatise leads to a misguided interpreta-tion. Whether Spinoza was actually driven by anti-Jewish sentiments iswithout importance, Strauss insists. Both the purpose and the results of theTreatise can be sufficiently understood by a “dutiful” (pflichtmäßig), histori-cal-critical reading, without the need for any reference to the historical orbiographical details of Spinoza’s relationship with Judaism.4

According to Cohen, the connection between politics and theologyimplied by the title of the Treatise is contingent, a mere reflection of Spin-oza’s contingent personal interests. Against this objection, Strauss arguesthat there is an intrinsic and coherent connection. As its title asserts, theTreatise intends to show “that the freedom to philosophize can not only beallowed with due regard to piety and peace in the state, but that it can onlybe suspended together with piety and peace in the state.”5 Thus, the con-nection becomes clearly visible when one looks at the declared purpose ofthe Treatise: to secure the freedom of philosophizing, which the earthlypowers regarded as a threat to peace and stability, and which the religiouspowers regarded as a threat to piety. Religious piety and political peace,however, were anything but separated issues in Spinoza’s time. Secular andspiritual powers were locked in a dogged struggle for political power, in


which both parties invoked theological arguments. Hence, Strauss asksrhetorically, “Can one speak of an objective isolation from one another ofthe political and ecclesiastic-theological problems in the seventeenth cen-tury?”6 Starting from modern premises, Cohen’s critique erroneously takesthis isolation for granted. As a result, it ignores the indications supplied bythe Treatise’s subtitle.

When the purpose of the Treatise is taken seriously, Cohen’s otherobjections equally lose their power. Thus, his allegation that Spinoza wrotethe Treatise to take revenge on the Jews because of the herem amounts to areversal of cause and effect, Strauss argues. Spinoza was excommunicatedbecause he held the freedom of philosophizing and the autonomy of reasonto be incompatible with faith and obedience to revealed law, and not theother way around. Similarly, Cohen’s objection that the Treatise’s focus onthe Old Testament reveals an anti-Jewish bias misinterprets the particularcharacter of its approach. In Spinoza’s time, the dominant interpretation ofthe Bible was protestant. According to Protestantism, the traditional, insti-tutional reading of the Bible was responsible for the decay of Christianity.7

In order to stop this decline, a return was necessary to the original and purebiblical teaching. Hence, principles of faith and religious doctrines couldonly be derived in direct confrontation with the biblical text, without ap-pealing to external sources. For this reason, Strauss argues, Protestantismdevoted relatively more attention to the Old Testament. Since Spinozaaimed to criticize the protestant spiritual powers of his time, he was com-pelled to imitate this procedure. Thus, he deliberately presented his cri-tique as an attempt to restore the original and pure meaning of the biblicalteaching. In reality, his exegesis was directed against that of Protestant or-thodoxy: its aim was to show that the original biblical teaching had no cog-nitive value whatsoever and thus did not have any power over autonomousreason. Ostensibly a return to the source, the Treatise conceals a critiqueof the source itself.8

A similar observation can be made regarding Cohen’s objection thatthe Treatise reduces the Jewish religion to a mere political instrument. Onthis point as well, Strauss argues, Spinoza emulates the strategy of protestantorthodoxy, which equally developed a politicizing reading of the Bible inorder to support its political claims. Pointing to the separate but parallel ex-istence of worldly and spiritual powers in the ancient Hebrew state, Protes-tantism wanted to assert its own power against the secular powers and tojustify its interference in worldly affairs. A partisan to the cause of the Dutchrepublic, Spinoza used the same argument, only to turn it against protestantorthodoxy. In his view, the separation of powers in the Hebrew state had

THE SHADOW OF SPINOZA 33

produced dire consequences: by proclaiming the revealed law, Moses hadintended to subject religion to politics in the first place, in order to secureJewish national unity. In this way, Spinoza argued ad hominem in favor ofthe cause of the Dutch regents, insofar as it concurred with the cause of phi-losophy. The stipend he received from the secular authorities did not play asignificant role. In assigning the monopoly of power to the state rather thanthe church, he argued that only the state could guarantee the neutrality andthe freedom of philosophy both against the church and against the state it-self. By the same token, he denied the church any position of power.9

Hence, Strauss concludes, those elements of the Theological-PoliticalTreatise Cohen disparages by tracing them to Spinoza’s biography can beexplained in much more plausible way by a “dutiful” (pflichtmäßig) interpre-tation that takes into account the historical and intellectual context. Cohen’s“biographical” critique fails to appreciate the specific motive underlying theTreatise: the emancipation of philosophy as the autonomous application ofhuman reason, or, in Spinoza’s own words, the “natural light” (lumen natu-rale).10 Nevertheless, Strauss adds, Cohen’s attack does have the merit ofclearing the path for an adequate interpretation of the Treatise, precisely bycalling attention to the motive of the author. For, regardless of whether thework was inspired by anti-Jewish sentiments, Spinoza did investigate theBible with a specific intention, and this investigation had an undeniable im-pact on traditional Judaism. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance formodern Judaism to understand how this impact was possible:

We are guided here by the interests of Judaism. These interests areaffected in the gravest manner by the question of which image of thebiblical world possesses the binding power of the truth. This is whySpinoza, who through his critique contributed more than anyone tothe removal of the traditional image, is of interest to us.11

But if not Spinoza’s intention, are not the method and the results ofhis biblical research necessarily anti-Jewish? According to Cohen, both ex-hibit a treacherous preference for Christianity. Here again, Strauss rejoins,the evidence adduced can be accounted for without this accusation. Admit-tedly, Spinoza opens the Treatise with an analysis of prophecy. Althoughthis may create the impression that Spinoza singles out the Jewish traditionand spares Christianity, this approach is, in fact, predicated on Spinoza’s ef-fort to emancipate human reason. In order to argue the autonomy of ratio-nal knowledge, he is compelled first to determine the epistemological


status as well as the cognitive value of prophecy. Only when it is demon-strated that reason alone can lead to true knowledge can Spinoza introduceanalytical and critical distinctions. Contrary to what Cohen assumes, thisdoes not involve a pro-Christian prejudice.

Even when Spinoza appears to side openly with Christianity there arepragmatic reasons, Strauss adds. Thus, when he espouses Paul’s critique ofthe Jewish law, he does so because he regards charity as the only true bibli-cal commandment and thus as the core of faith and piety. Of course, this“minimalist” conception of faith is anything but Pauline: it derives fromSpinoza’s view that biblical doctrine has no cognitive but only practicalvalue. Already in the preface of the Treatise, Spinoza writes that his inves-tigations taught him that “the authority of the prophets only carries weightin those matters that regard the practice of life and true virtue, and thatotherwise their opinions hardly affect us.”12 The argument in support ofthis view is supplied in the thirteenth chapter, the title of which states that“Scripture teaches nothing if not very simple things and aims at nothingbeyond obedience,” and thus has no authority over autonomous reason.13

The radical implications of this view, however, were hidden from view bythe ostensibly pious references to Paul.14

While this counters Cohen’s objections to Spinoza’s method, thereremains the matter of the results of his investigations. These, however,cannot be said to be more critical with regard to Judaism than regardingother revealed religions, Strauss holds. Even where they focus on the OldTestament, they are concerned with biblical elements that were controver-sial within Jewish orthodoxy as well. The question of the corporality ofGod, for example, had been a bone of contention among Jewish theolo-gians long before Spinoza uttered his criticisms. The same holds for thetension between national or particular elements and universal elementsthat permeates the Pentateuch, and which Spinoza takes to task. The Biblecontains both passages that refer to the divine election of the Jewish nationand passages that proclaim the love of God for all nations. Hence, the factthat Spinoza rejects divine election as religious particularism and appeals tothe universal elements cannot be attributed to an inadmissible reading ofthe Bible, nor to a politicizing interpretation of biblical history. These andother observations lead Strauss to the conclusion that “the essential con-clusions of Spinoza’s Bible science are sufficiently motivated by the actualnature of the object of this science.”15

According to Strauss, Spinoza was compelled to defend the autonomy ofreason and the freedom of philosophy against the worldly and the spiritual


powers. For this reason, he had to adapt and accommodate his modusoperandi to their theological-political discourse. Cohen, for whom the legiti-macy of the Enlightenment is a matter of course, incorrectly interprets Spin-oza’s political and historical accommodations as a pointed attack againstJudaism. The emergence of biblical science, however, should be regarded as aEuropean event, Strauss asserts: Spinoza’s efforts to emancipate reason werenot primarily aimed against Judaism, but against all forms of revealed religioninsofar as they denied the autonomy of human reason. This more general ori-entation made Spinoza a founder of the Enlightenment. Hence, there is noreason to speak of a “humanly incomprehensible betrayal.”16

Nevertheless, Cohen’s errors are instructive because they help us tomore accurately raise the question regarding the significance of Spinoza’sbiblical science for Judaism. If the motives underlying the Theological-Political Treatise can be made sufficiently clear by means of a “dutiful”reading, without invoking Spinoza’s personal relationship to Judaism, howcan its undeniable historical effect on Judaism be explained? How did ageneral critique of revealed religion succeed in profoundly affecting thetraditional Jewish world? Differently stated: if Spinoza’s motives are ex-plicable without referring to his personal background, what is their rele-vance for the interests of Judaism? The customary answer is that Spinoza’sreading of the Bible is more sober and honest than its traditional counter-part. Strauss, it should be remembered, initially shared this judgmentwhen he appealed to the historical work of Dubnow. The following pas-sage shows that he has come to question this view:

From our standpoint, however, it must be asked in all seriousness howthis “honesty” relates to possible higher needs of Judaism, whether itbestows a right to destroy the beautiful world of tradition? What doesthe struggle for the autonomy of science and the state have to do withthe interest of Judaism? What interest can Judaism have in knowingwhat the dawn of its history was really (wirklich) like?17

Underneath these questions, we can discern the Rechtsfrage, the quaes-tio iuris already discussed in the previous chapter: of what concern is Europeto Judaism, and with what right has Europe penetrated and altered the worldof tradition? Was the contact between the two worlds legitimate? Did Ju-daism have—and does it still have—an interest in being enlightened about itsorigins, and if so, what is that interest? The radicalism with which Cohensummons Spinoza before the tribunal of Judaism fortifies Strauss in his viewthat a renewed confrontation with the Theological-Political Treatise is in order.In the next section, we will see how he stages this confrontation.


Before the Tribunal:Biblical Science and the Critique of Religion

Strauss’s debate with Cohen is the catalyst for his own investigations, notonly in the theoretical sense, but also in the material and practical sense. Bythe strength and quality of his article, he is appointed as a researcher at theAcademy for the Science of Judaism (Akademie für die Wissenschaft desJudentums), under the supervision of Julius Guttmann. An interesting co-incidence: the academy had been founded shortly after the First WorldWar through a collaboration between Franz Rosenzweig and HermannCohen.18 Strauss’s official research assignment is to investigate the biblicalscience of Spinoza and some of his predecessors.19

When one compares the original assignment with the result, how-ever, a discrepancy leaps to the eye. The book that presents the fruits ofStrauss’s research bears the full title Spinoza’s Critique of Religion as the Basisof His Biblical Science: Investigations into Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise.Apparently, the focus originally assigned (Spinoza’s biblical science) haschanged to his critique of religion, which is now identified as its basis toboot. This is remarkable, considering the fact that it runs counter to thereigning view, according to which the relationship is exactly the reverse:biblical science as the basis of the critique of religion. In fact, it runscounter to Spinoza’s own assertion. As he claims in the Theological-PoliticalTreatise, his critique of the Bible is based on an impartial, scientific readingof Scripture. This is the claim—the claim to greater “honesty” mentionedearlier—with which, after Spinoza, biblical science developed into one ofthe most important tools of the Enlightenment, if not the most important.

Why this striking reversal? Strauss provides the following motiva-tion. In the course of his research, it became apparent that the focus had to be shifted to the critique of religion as a condition of possibility for biblicalscience.20 To begin with, he points to the method of biblical science, whichSpinoza explicitly models on natural science. This becomes apparent fromthe set of basic rules Spinoza formulates in the seventh chapter of the Theological-Political Treatise, entitled “Of the Interpretation of Scripture.”First, the Bible may be explained only by means of the Bible itself.21 Sec-ond, the text may be judged only by its literal meaning, for only the latteris the true meaning which as such is accessible to both the believer and thenonbeliever.22 Third, the reconstruction of the true meaning must proceedfrom the general to the specific, or from the universal to the particular.This means that one has to determine first what the Bible teaches every-where in a univocal, clear, and unambiguous way with regard to universal


themes. Once this has been done, less general elements can be interpretedin the light of what has been established.23

As we saw, Strauss argues that this modus operandi largely mirrors the“purist” approach of contemporary protestant scholars. However, he alsopoints out that Spinoza’s restoration of the Bible’s original teaching by re-turning to the uncorrupt, authentic text serves an entirely different purpose.His biblical science is rooted in a hermeneutical decision to understand theBible as a literary text and to subject it to literary criticism, following criteriathat apply to the interpretation of texts in general.24 The fundamental pre-supposition of this decision is that the Bible is a document written by humanbeings. As Strauss succinctly puts it, “The Bible is a human book—in this onesentence we can sum up all the presuppositions of Spinoza’s Bible science.”25

Although this presupposition warrants the possibility of a scientificapproach, it is far from obvious that it has a sufficient scientific foundationitself, Strauss continues. From a religious point of view, to say the least, it isunacceptable. For a believer, the Bible derives its specific authority from itsnonhuman, divine origin: its contents were revealed by God himself andsubsequently written down by man. This premise, of course, leads to an en-tirely different exegesis. Hence, when Spinoza posits the basic assumptionof his scientific hermeneutics, he first has to confront a rival hermeneutics.If he wants to see his interpretation accepted, he is first compelled to subvertthe traditional reading of the Bible. In other words, he must successfully re-fute the rival point of view before he can go on to found biblical science.

Moreover, there is a second argument that shows the priority of thecritique of religion over biblical science. This becomes apparent when onelooks at the relationship between the Treatise and Spinoza’s other greatwork, the Ethics. From the central teaching of the Ethics, the impossibilityof revelation follows logically. When God is identified with the unchange-able and intelligible order of nature, every supernatural and inscrutable intervention is excluded, such as revelation or creation ex nihilo.26 Theonly divine laws are the eternal and immutable laws of nature, and God’sactivity coincides with the reign of causal necessity, understood as logicalnecessity. For God to violate his own laws by declaring his will in a mirac-ulous way would amount to a logical contradiction.27 The same holds forman: to act against divine will or natural necessity is impossible. Accordingto Spinoza, the unity of will and understanding of God or nature are oper-ative in everything that is, including human action. Carrying this doctrineof “predestination” to its extreme, he denies the existence of sin.28

On the most fundamental level, then, Spinoza’s critique of revealed re-ligion is identical to the closed system of the Ethics, Strauss argues.29 When


one accepts the basic premises of this system, it automatically follows that thebiblical assertions about God and the prophets are based on errors. What ismore, it follows that there is no place for the inscrutable and omnipotent bib-lical God within the totality of beings. But if revelation is so carefully excludedfrom the bulwark of the Ethics, whence the need to venture outside and attackexisting revealed religion by means of its most authoritative text? Why un-dertake a critique of religion at all? The explanation, Strauss argues, requiresus to turn once again to the historical context of the Theological-Political Trea-tise and its purpose: to secure the freedom of philosophizing in combinationwith political and religious stability. In the seventeenth century, this freedomis threatened by a theological-political conflict. While the legitimacy of phi-losophy and the right of reason to judge autonomously are beyond questionfor Spinoza, he sees religious orthodoxy expand its tutelage in ever more vio-lent ways, and in an escalating conflict with secular powers. In writing theTreatise, Spinoza responds to this situation by pursuing a twofold goal.

To begin with, he wishes to defuse the theological-political powderkeg by presenting an interpretation of the Bible less prone to producingcontroversy and compatible with the freedom of philosophizing. It shouldbe noted that Spinoza does not intend to eradicate religion root andbranch. Although he regards religion as a kind of superstition, he also in-dicates that its errors and prejudices are rooted in human nature and thuspossess a natural necessity.30 Superstition originates when the human striv-ing for self-preservation attaches itself to transitory objects and becomesentangled in the web of the passions. Man attributes his misfortunes, hispowerlessness and despair to the anger of a higher power, which he subse-quently tries to appease by means of rituals. In this way, he subjects himselfto a projection of his own fear, trying to avert illusory dangers with illusorymeasures. Escape from this vicious circle is possible only when the strivingfor self-preservation is directed toward the eternal, when man discovers theeternal within the self-determining activity of the mind. In the theoreticalor philosophical life, man learns to know and love the eternal, and his striv-ing for self-preservation finds its highest fulfillment.31 Nevertheless, onlyfew are capable of liberating themselves from the domination of the pas-sions, Spinoza holds. The large majority remain irretrievably caught in thetemporal, are incapable of “governing their affairs in accordance with afixed plan,” and fall prey to superstition.32

Nevertheless, in the form of religion, superstition can play a useful so-cial role, on the condition that its doctrines and commandments are coordinated as much as possible. As we have seen, Spinoza makes clever use of the “purism” of protestant exegesis. In his “purified” reading, the principles


of the biblical teaching approximate as far as possible those of a minimal rational morality. To this end, ostensibly appealing to Paul, he accords a cen-tral place to the commandment of charity, although in fact he merely attrib-utes a practical significance to it. In this way, he allows a “disarmed” Bible toretain its function as a support and guide for whoever is incapable of leadinga philosophical life, as opposed to the philosopher, whose autonomy is thecorrelate of his theoretical activity.

This brings us to the second and most important goal of the Treatise,which is to secure the survival of philosophy. The theological-political con-flicts of the age, Spinoza observes, prevent the few capable of philosophizingfrom detaching themselves from the authority of Scripture. Caught in theprejudices and superstitions forced on them by the theologians, they lackconfidence in the legitimacy and the power of their own reason. Hence,Strauss argues, the program of the Treatise is aimed at reawakening their con-fidence in reason by challenging the claims of theology. The scientific re-construction and interpretation of the Bible is intended to show that its solepurpose is to promote pious obedience to the commandments of justice andcharity. In this, it differs fundamentally from philosophy, the sole purposeof which is the discovery of the truth through reason. Thus, the domain oftheology is closely circumscribed and strictly distinguished from that of phi-losophy. According to Spinoza, the theologians’ sole task is to oversee thefollowing of the biblical teaching, nothing more. They have no right to placephilosophy under their tutelage, let alone to persecute the philosophers.

In order to rekindle confidence in reason, however, Spinoza cannot appeal to the Ethics, since the latter already presupposes the legitimacy of reason. Before he can initiate his readers into his philosophical system, theymust be liberated from the prejudice that reason cannot operate au-tonomously because it is subject to revealed religion. To this end, an impar-tial and scientific determination of the biblical teaching is required. Onlywhen this determination has been completed can the question be raisedwhether the biblical doctrine is true, and can the prejudice be critically refuted. Hence, Strauss argues, the scientific design of the Treatise is essen-tially propaedeutic: the book aims to liberate the reader toward philosophy—Spinoza’s philosophy—but it is itself prephilosophic or pretheoretic. It doesnot address philosophic or theoretic reason, but only reason as such, in orderto release reason from the hold of revealed religion.33

According to Strauss, however, this presentation is somewhat mislead-ing: if we are to believe Spinoza, we first have to ascertain what the Bibleteaches de facto, in order to subsequently judge whether this teaching is alsovalid de iure.34 This obscures the fact that the very first step is possible only


on the basis of a preliminary critique of the orthodox interpretation. For, aswe saw earlier on, the hermeneutical basic rules of Spinoza’s biblical scienceimply that the Bible is a human product, and this implication in its turn pre-supposes the successful refutation of the opposing view: “The mere fact thatSpinoza’s Bible science ought to be (sein soll) the foundation of a critique ofrevelation proves that in truth the critique of revelation is the precondition ofBible science.”35 The requirement that a scientific inquiry into the Bible bethe basis of a critique can be fulfilled only when the hermeneutic position ofthe opponent has already been subjected to critique and rejected.

This sequence becomes apparent in the structure of the Theological-Political Treatise, Strauss observes. The basis of biblical science is laid only inthe seventh chapter, “On the Interpretation of Scripture.” In the precedingchapters, Spinoza criticizes various aspects of the traditional interpretation ofthe Bible, in particular prophetic revelation, divine providence, the authorityof tradition, and miracles. The critique developed in these chapters is in-tended to be radical, principled, and universal: Spinoza contests both thepossibility and the intelligibility of revelation in general, and thus aims at allreligions that claim to be revealed and claim to have universal validity.36

The two purposes of the Theological-Political Treatise thus require anew scientific exegesis of the Bible, which is capable, on the one hand, ofmitigating the theological-political conflict because it is generally accept-able and, on the other hand, of referring theology within its proper bound-aries, so that potential philosophers can be shown the way towardphilosophy. In both cases, however, a critique of the principles of the tradi-tional exegesis is the necessary prerequisite. Only when the position of theopponent has been refuted convincingly is Spinoza able to deploy his ownhermeneutical principles, and can biblical science proceed. The foundationof the latter must therefore be sought in the critique of religion.

But is the critique itself scientific? Spinoza, at any rate, answers in theaffirmative. In his view, it is purely theoretical and free of any presuppositions.According to Strauss, however, there is reason for doubt. In his view, it is pos-sible and even necessary to ask whether indeed there are no presuppositions atplay. In fact, the possibility of raising this question is contained in the very pri-ority of the critique of religion over biblical science he has uncovered:

However, when Spinoza reaches beyond the context of his own life andthought and when he embarks on the critique of another context, he issubject to a norm other than the one immanent to him. By undertakingthis critique he subjects himself to the judgment implicit in the question(das Gericht der Frage) of whether he hit or missed the criticized context.


Only when this question is posed do the specific presuppositions of hiscritique emerge.37

With his critique of religion, Strauss explains, Spinoza leaves theseclusion of his philosophical system in order to assail the legitimacy of adifferent, alien order. By taking this step, it becomes possible for a thirdparty to ascertain whether the critique attains its goal, and on what grounds.Strauss’s use of the word “tribunal” (Gericht) in the original German passageis striking. For where else could a Rechtsfrage be addressed? His choice ofwords shows how his original question continues to guide his current re-search and has become more focused. From the Zionist dilemma throughthe general confrontation between Europe and Judaism, we have now ar-rived at the point where Spinoza reaches beyond his philosophical systemand prepares to strike out at revealed religion. The passage quoted, how-ever, adds a number of other important elements. First, the presuppositionsof Spinoza’s critique of religion come to the surface only when it is viewed“in action,” at the moment when it actually confronts its opponent. This re-quires, second, that the latter’s position is also brought within the range ofinquiry and taken into account, as the setting of a tribunal requires:

We cannot hope for a decision on this point and thus on the answerto the question regarding the condition of possibility of radical cri-tique of religion until we have investigated the critique of religion inits act or exercise (in ihrem Vollzug). It does not suffice to consider theposition of the attacker only. For critique of religion transcends thatposition. Hence the position under attack must be seen as it is by it-self. Furthermore, we must observe which assumptions come intoplay on both sides by virtue of the conflict (Aus-einander-Setzung).38

Strauss’s analysis of the opponents’ respective positions will be dis-cussed in the following section. Still, a question remains. Who or what isthe tribunal that is to judge the legitimacy and the effectiveness of Spin-oza’s venture? Under what “law” shall it be judged? And is it at all possibleto take such an impartial perspective? Clearly, Strauss casts himself in therole of the adjudicator, but unfortunately he fails to clarify this issue.

Spinoza’s Twofold Strategy

What then, does an examination of the critique of religion “in its act or exercise” show us? One of Strauss’s most important and most interestinginsights is that, in fact, Spinoza deploys two different forms of critique,


which, however, he fails to distinguish explicitly. This becomes apparentfrom a more or less conspicuous contradiction in the Theological-PoliticalTreatise. In the preface, Spinoza writes, “No wonder, then, that of the an-cient religion nothing remains but its outward cult.”39 This remark echoesthe characteristic complaint of Protestantism, which viewed the present asa decline from the perfect beginning. Emulating this complaint, Spinozaostensibly undertakes to counter the decay by returning to the origins ofthe “old religion,” to the literal sense of the biblical text, determined “to as-sert nothing regarding it nor to admit anything as its doctrine, but what Ican clearly derive from it.”40 In the fifteenth chapter, however, when Spin-oza argues for the separation of philosophy and theology, the tone has al-tered markedly: referring to the origins of the “old religion,” he calls them“prejudices of the ancient people” (antiqui vulgi praejudicia). Subsequently,he forcefully declares the primacy of reason, lashing out at the theologianswho want to subject it to “the dead letter.”41

Thus, Spinoza’s central hermeneutic procedure—the return to thepure and authentic meaning of the Bible—conceals a twofold strategy,Strauss claims. While the first of these ostensibly submits to the literalmeaning of the Bible in opposition to traditional Christian theology, thesecond radically calls into question the veracity of this literal meaning.42

Although both strategies serve the general purpose of the Treatise—to en-courage the philosophical reader to detach himself from the authority ofthe Bible—they apply different criteria.43 While the first strategy arguesexclusively on the basis of the Bible itself, the second acknowledges reasonas its sole criterion. Hence, Spinoza’s critique of religion is composed oftwo parts: on the one hand, a critique of the traditional theological inter-pretation of the Bible and, on the other hand, a critique of the Bible on thebasis of reason. Combined, the two strategies constitute a powerful weaponin the battle against revealed religion. When each is considered separately,however, both ultimately prove to fail, Strauss finds.

The principal characteristics of the first strategy were already outlinedin the previous section: acceptance in principle of the authority of the text inits literal meaning, and reconstruction of the original biblical doctrine by fo-cusing on its universal elements.44 Although Spinoza seemingly emulatesthe protestant exegesis, in reality his reading is pointedly antibiblical, aim-ing to show that the Bible in its original meaning cannot pose an obstacleto philosophy. The presuppositions underlying this covert attack, however,are deeply problematic, Strauss finds. Spinoza determines the contents ofthe biblical doctrine using the criterion of consensus: only those elementsthat are proclaimed everywhere and univocally, those elements on which the


Bible is in accordance with itself, may be regarded as constitutive of biblicaldoctrine.45 An important corollary of this approach is that the Old and theNew Testament are regarded as perfectly equal parts of a single whole.Thus, Spinoza discovers the same elements of biblical doctrine in such di-verse figures as Moses, the old prophets, King Solomon, Jesus, and Paul.The precepts he thus distills from the text, however, are hardly distinguish-able from basic moral precepts that can be discovered by human reasonwithout recourse to revelation. For Spinoza, the principles of this “rationalmorality,” which constitutes the true and original content of the Bible, re-flect and reinforce the philosophical truth.46

The Theological-Political Treatise, however, aims to strictly distinguishthe purpose of the Bible from that of philosophy. To this end, Spinoza dis-tinguishes between the philosophical and the nonphilosophical parts of thebiblical text, while regarding the nonphilosophical parts as a popular re-flection of the philosophical parts, adapted to the understanding of themany. The philosophical elements can be disclosed only by a reading that,as Spinoza puts it, is more “spiritual” than the orthodox reading. Accordingto Strauss, however, the “spirit” to which he refers is nothing other thanreason, and the “spiritual” exegete is none other than the philosopher. Thelatter, moreover, is capable of understanding the rational principles byhimself, without the help of the Bible. As a result, the purpose of the Biblecomes to be defined entirely by means of its nonphilosophical parts: to pre-serve and promote obedience to God and to practice charity. Exclusivelypractical, this content can in no way thwart the purpose of philosophy, theattainment of knowledge. Thus, the criterion of univocality and consensusproves in fact to be used to sidetrack the biblical doctrine.

This becomes even more visible when Spinoza’s exegetical principleis understood in its negative sense, Strauss explains. If the Bible onlyteaches when it is univocal and in accordance with itself, it does not teachanything when it contradicts itself. In this way, its range is severely re-stricted, and it becomes fairly easy for Spinoza to point out all kinds of con-tradictions throughout the Bible—especially as regards issues on which it disagrees with philosophy—giving free rein to reason regarding every-thing the Bible does not teach. The only elements of biblical doctrine thatremain are the general principles of obedience and charity, both aimed atsecuring the salvation of the soul. They constitute the unum necessarium,the “one thing needful,” by which the believer must abide. Strictly speak-ing, biblical doctrine does not extend beyond this requirement: all furtherdogmatics developed by orthodox theology can be rejected as incoherenton the basis of the principle of contradiction.47


In this way, however, Spinoza’s project encounters a major difficulty,Strauss observes: the primary condition for the “purist” critique is the ac-ceptance, even provisionally, of the authority of the literal biblical text.One cannot have the cake and eat it: if Spinoza wants to uphold his own ex-egetical principle, he too is bound by the unum necessarium of obedience. Asa result, his efforts to liberate philosophy are inadmissible. On closer in-spection, the requirement of literalness proves to be the weakest point ofSpinoza’s first strategy, the refutation of the orthodox interpretation of theBible. As we have seen, his main presupposition is that the literal meaningmust be the point of departure for this refutation, since it is accessible tobeliever and nonbeliever alike. As Strauss points out, however, for a be-liever a correct understanding of even the literal meaning of the Bible isimpossible without the aid of divine light, without the belief that it hasbeen revealed by an inscrutable creator. By the same token, the fact that theBible contradicts itself and does not offer a univocal doctrine is no refuta-tion, but rather a confirmation of the mysterious and divine character ofrevelation. This basic assumption, however, is ignored a priori by Spinoza’srequirement of equal accessibility. Hence, his reading of the Bible alreadypresupposes the refutation of the orthodox point of view. In other words,Spinoza commits what is called a petitio principii: he presupposes what hesets out to prove. “The critique of orthodoxy stands or falls by resolutelykeeping the opponent to the literal meaning of the text of Scripture. . . .Since his opponents do not recognize as their authority the merely literalmeaning of Scripture, the whole of Spinoza’s critique of orthodoxy, in sofar as that critique seeks to refute orthodoxy, rests on a petitio principii.”48 Inthis respect, and contrary to Spinoza’s own claim, his “purist” reading isneither purely immanent nor free from presuppositions.

If the very point of departure of Spinoza’s first strategy rests on a petitio principii, and if its results do not exempt him from obedience, onecan only conclude that it ultimately fails, according to Strauss: “Thus it is not on the basis of Scripture that Spinoza can bring about the liberationof philosophizing—his real aim.”49 This means that the success of the Theological-Political Treatise comes to depend on the success of the secondstrategy, the critique on the basis of reason. Here again, Spinoza startsfrom an element he considers to be equally accessible to believer and non-believer. Even when religious orthodoxy insists that divine assistance is in-dispensable for a correct understanding of the Bible, he argues, this doesnot do away with the fact that the text also tries to convince unbelievers ofthe religious truths by referring to miracles, held to be perceptible to be-lievers and nonbelievers alike. A classic example, often invoked by Strauss,


is the well-known biblical contest between the prophet Elijah and theprophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.50 As opposed to the altar devoted toBaal, the altar erected by Elijah in praise of Jehovah caught fire; this eventcould be witnessed and recognized as a miracle by both parties.

As Strauss points out, miracles are directly related to the foundationsof revealed religion. According to orthodoxy, they occur when the creatorintervenes in his creation, and as such they bear witness to the miraculousorigins of man and the world. An omnipotent, provident, and inscrutableGod who created the world also possesses the power and the freedom to in-tervene in it, either by revealing himself in words or by intervening in theworkings of nature.51 This explains why the protestant return to biblicalsources in the seventeenth century was accompanied by a renewed interestin the subject. By appealing to miracles, the protestant orthodoxy of Spin-oza’s time attempted to provide an empirical and experiential basis for itstheological and political claims.52 Small wonder, then, that this interestfound a critical echo in the Theological-Political Treatise: the seventh chapteron the interpretation of the Bible is prepared by six chapters that offer anincisive critique of prophecy, revelation, and miracles in general.53

At first sight, we may wonder why Spinoza takes so many pains,Strauss remarks. After all, doesn’t the Ethics provide a comprehensive andprofoundly rational critique of miracles? From the identification of Godand nature, it follows that miracles, including creation out of nothing andrevelation, are impossible. As we saw in the previous section, Spinoza’s cri-tique of religion is essentially contained in this philosophical or “meta-physical” critique. At the same time, however, this begs the question:insofar as the metaphysical critique derives from the system of the Ethics, italready presupposes the constitution and thus the legitimacy of philosophythat the Theological-Political Treatise seeks to establish. Hence, Spinoza can-not appeal to the metaphysical critique in order to convince the potentialphilosophers among his readers: he is compelled to refute the biblical ac-counts of miracles on a prephilosophical level.

On this level, Spinoza’s most obvious point of departure is experi-ence, to which orthodoxy also refers. As a “positive” religion claiming anempirical foundation, revealed religion becomes susceptible to a critiquethat equally invokes experience in order to combat these claims. Hence,what Strauss calls Spinoza’s “positive critique” raises the question whetherGod can be known through the experience of miracles, or, more formally,whether it is possible to deduce the existence of God from experience, asthe orthodox theologians contend.54 Moreover, Spinoza gives an additionalreason to proceed in this manner: traditional orthodox theology connects


its empirical foundation to a concept of miracles not to be found as such inthe Bible. When it understands the miracle as a divine disruption of thelaws of the natural order, it uses a concept of nature derivative from Greekphilosophy and thus alien to the Bible. Insofar as it accepts and uses thisconcept, theology acknowledges the legitimacy of philosophy and reason.55

This does not yet amount to an affirmation that unassisted reason is able tofathom God and the world, as Spinoza tries to demonstrate. Theology rec-ognizes the right of reason, but not its autonomy. It regards reason as es-sentially limited and in need of revelation. Even this limited leeway,however, is sufficient for the critique of miracles, based on experience, tobe able to appeal to reason.

At first, Spinoza appears to proceed very cautiously. He indicates thathe intends to use his rational capacities only to test the theological propo-sitions, without saying anything as to their truth.56 Subsequently, he turnsto theology, which attributes demonstrative power to miracles as supernat-ural events, accessible to both the faithful believer and the nonbeliever whoonly uses unassisted reason. At this point, however, Spinoza introduces acrucial proviso: he states that unprejudiced reason cannot regard a miracleas a supernatural phenomenon, since it cannot claim to know the limits ofthe power of nature. From the perspective of unprejudiced reason, whattheology calls a miracle is at most a problem that cannot be explained onthe basis of current knowledge of nature.57 In a letter to his friend HenryOldenburg, Spinoza expresses this condition in a succinct manner:

I venture to ask you whether we petty men possess sufficient knowl-edge of nature to be able to lay down the limits of its force and power,or to say that a given thing surpasses its power? No one could go sofar without arrogance. We may, therefore, without presumption ex-plain miracles as far as possible by natural causes. When we cannotexplain them, nor even prove their impossibility, we may well sus-pend our judgment about them and establish religion, as I have said,solely by the wisdom of its doctrines.58

By means of this “deferral,” Spinoza’s positive critique deploys asilent but deadly power, Strauss points out. Even in its limited form, theright of reason is the basis for the legitimate expectation of progress in ourknowledge of the limits of nature. In the light of this expectation, the expe-rience of miracles—recorded and situated in the past—loses its demonstra-tive power. The fact that in biblical times an event was held inexplicableand thus attributed to divine intervention does not imply that it must re-main unexplained. Critical scientific observation and analysis of the event,


combined with historical research, may eventually yield a purely natural ex-planation. Until such an explanation has been found, however, to deducewithout further ado the existence of an omnipotent God from the currentknowledge of nature is inadmissible. From this perspective, the biblical ac-counts are indeed nothing more than “prejudices of the ancient people,”the fruit of the primitive and associative mode of thinking Spinoza deemscharacteristic of the Bible as a whole.59

As long as the limits of nature are insufficiently known, unprejudiced“positive” reason cannot recognize any phenomenon as a miracle. How-ever, the reverse also holds: all that reason can successfully claim againsttheology is the postponement of judgment and additional research. As longas no definitive result is available, the possibility remains that the biblicalevents related as miracles will prove to be miracles after all. Therefore, thepositive critique must be buttressed by further investigation into the relia-bility and credibility of biblical miracle stories. Strauss calls this supple-mentary critique “philological-historical,” as it assesses the Bible’s literaryand historical consistency and examines biblical authorship.60

Spinoza’s philological-historical critique focuses on the orthodox con-viction that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, and thus aims at the heartof orthodoxy. According to tradition, Moses was directly and personally in-spired by God in the Sinai desert to write the Pentateuch. Subsequently,moreover, the text was handed down in a continuous and uninterruptedprocess, without even the minutest change. Against this claim, Spinoza ad-duces a variety of arguments aimed to prove that the Pentateuch was writtenmuch later by someone else with far less talent and authority, and who pre-sented events from his time as the fulfillment of earlier prophecies. No sin-gle human being, Spinoza holds, could have performed the many miraclesattributed to Moses, just as it is impossible that the story, if at all reliable, sur-vived intact through the ages.61

Ultimately, the philological-historical arguments are merely intendedto support the positive critique. The latter is the principal weapon with whichSpinoza seeks to free reason from orthodox theology’s tutelage. Since reasoncan legitimately postpone judgment on miracles, it is also able to bracket theauthority of theology. No more is needed for the addressees of the Treatise toclear the way toward Spinoza’s philosophy, to the metaphysical system of theEthics in which there is no place for an inscrutable God or for miracles. Assoon as the reader enters this system, the propaedeutic endeavor of both thecritique based on the Bible and the positive critique becomes superfluous.

As Strauss remarks, Spinoza presents both phases in the trajectory asif the former is founded in the latter: the positive critique, he maintains, is


based on the principle of the unlimited power of nature, which underlies themetaphysical critique. If this relation holds, nothing seems to stand in theway of the refutation of revealed religion and religious orthodoxy. Accord-ing to Strauss, however, there is no such relation. The positive critique andits corollaries are no more capable of refuting revelation than the critiquebased on Scripture. Take, to begin with, the philological-historical critique,which argues that the events, actions, and prophecies recorded in the Bibleare improbable and implausible, both in themselves and as a result of theprocess of tradition. For a believer, however, this is not a valid argument.The philological-historical critique only proves that miracles are improba-ble or even impossible from a human point of view, and this is something abeliever will not deny. On the contrary, he will contend that this proves thesuperhuman, divine character of miracles, just like the improbability of anunbroken line of tradition is a sign of the workings of divine providence. Inneither of the two cases does the philological-historical critique disprove thepossibility that a divine agent miraculously intervenes in the order of thingsand communicates his will to an elect human being with superhuman pow-ers. Spinoza is only able to deploy his standard of judgment within certainlimits, Strauss asserts: “But what is Spinoza actually proving? In fact, noth-ing more than that it is not humanly possible that Moses wrote the Penta-teuch, and that the text of a book should come down to us through thecenturies without any corruption of the text at any single passage.”62

This brings us to the positive critique itself. Contrary to Spinoza’sclaim, there is no foundational relationship between the metaphysical andthe positive critique, Strauss holds. The positive critique, which aims todemonstrate that miracles cannot be known by reason, is based on therecognition that we are ignorant of the power of nature, and that it wouldbe presumptuous to limit this power by referring to divine intervention.This claim, however, differs fundamentally from the more sweeping con-tention of the metaphysical critique that the power of nature is unlimited,from which it follows that divine intervention is impossible.63 Hence, thepositive critique can never go as far as the metaphysical critique: it can onlysubmit that miracles cannot be known to scientific reason, not that they areimpossible. The positive critique, Strauss argues, “merely proves that mir-acles are not recognizable as such by the truly unbelieving mind which doesnot openly assume—or surreptitiously smuggle in—an element of faith.Reason devoid of faith, engaged in the pursuit of scientific inquiry, showsitself as immune to miracles.”64

As Strauss explains, positive reason can only maintain that miraclescannot be known because it is essentially immune to the demonstrative


power the believer attributes to them. Immunity, however, does not yetconstitute a refutation, so that the argument from unknowability has onlyrelative validity. Since a final judgment is postponed to an indefinite future,the knowability of miracles remains an open question. The foundationalrelationship argued by Spinoza does not provide a solution, on the con-trary: if the power of nature is indeed unlimited, progress in human knowl-edge can never come to an end, so that a conclusive explanation of miraclesremains outstanding.65 Thus, the positive critique based on reason runsaground on its own presuppositions. In Strauss’s view, however, this doesnot necessarily constitute a complete failure. As he goes on to show, posi-tive reason puts its immunity to effective critical use. It does so by present-ing its openness as the sign of a higher, more advanced, and more reflectiveconsciousness. From this vantage point, it can then denounce belief in mir-acles as a primitive, prescientific and hence lower form of consciousness.66

The distance thus created acquires the character of an unbridgeableprogress. In this context, Strauss makes an observation that will prove to becrucial to his philosophical trajectory:

On the basis of this essentially historical self-awareness (wesentlich his-torisches Selbstbewusstsein), the positive mind finds itself—indepen-dently of all secondary, inconclusive philological and historicalcriticism applied to miracles and which, in principle, leave the ques-tion open—unmovable (unerreichbar) by all reports on miracles, andtherefore all experience of miracles. To the positive mind it is plainthat the prophets and the apostles did not view and analyze the eventswhich they report with the same sobriety and severity which thatmind brings to bear on events observed.67

The mainspring of the “positive spirit” is the will to investigate andjudge, in total freedom, that which is immediately given. This sole inten-tion is understood as a progress with regard to other positions that do notbegin with immediate experience. The latter are branded “prejudices” andthus are compelled to substantiate and justify their claims regarding whattranscends immediate experience.68 Hence, the concept of “prejudice” isessentially a historical category, Strauss emphasizes: it is not so much the re-sult as the expression of the “essentially historical self-consciousness.”69 Itposits a caesura in time between a dark past characterized by ignorance, su-perstition, and submission on the one hand, and an enlightened future ofknowledge and freedom on the other. With the concept of prejudice, thepositive spirit denotes the enemy it combats: initially, it is revealed religion;later on it encompasses all claims to knowledge of the past. The fight


against prejudice thus takes the form of a historical project, a campaign thefinal result of which is already encapsulated in the self-declared “advanced-ness” (Fortgeschrittenheit) of the positive spirit.

In this way, Strauss points to the effective core of Spinoza’s critiqueof religion and his biblical science, but also to what he considers to be the essence of the Enlightenment and modernity in general. For unpreju-diced reason and the positive spirit operate independently from both thephilological-historical and the metaphysical critique. In fact, they precedethem: “The authority of Scripture was shaken prior to all historical andphilological criticism, but also prior to all metaphysics, through the estab-lishment of the positive mind, through the disenchantment of the worldand through the self-awareness of the disenchanting mind.”70 The critiqueof religion as the foundation of biblical science is not exclusively linked to Spinoza’s philosophical system. As Strauss puts it, one need not be aSpinozist to conduct biblical science.71 The positive spirit is the startingpoint of the early, radical Enlightenment as such, in its attempt to disman-tle revealed religion once and for all and to liberate itself from all prejudice.Prejudice, according to Strauss, is “the unambiguous polemical correlate of the all too ambiguous term ‘freedom.’”72 The freedom claimed by thepositive spirit is a negative freedom, a “freedom-from” rather than a “free-dom-to.” It only manifests itself in bringing to light, investigating and rejecting prejudices.73

This approach did not originate with Spinoza, Strauss points out, butwith René Descartes. Cartesian methodical doubt attempted to liberate itselffrom all prejudices at one fell swoop, in order to find an unshakable founda-tion for science. In Descartes’s view, the realm of prejudice included the tra-ditional Aristotelian analysis of the visible world, which had been adopted byChristian scholasticism. This analysis interpreted the order of the world as acausal chain that ultimately points to God as the first unmoved mover. Ac-cording to Descartes, however, the traditional investigation of the causalchain could only lead to the recognition of the imperfection of human un-derstanding, not to knowledge of God. Divine existence could be ascertainedonly through self-knowledge: man had to free himself from the causal chainin order to discover the immediate cause of his existence. In this way, the im-mediate or the present became the focal point of Cartesian metaphysics.Likewise, Spinoza rejected traditional philosophy’s starting point and con-centrated on the immediately given.74

But how effective is reason’s declaration of independence against a po-sition that claims to be based on something that precedes all human judg-ment? According to Strauss, the critique based on experience and reason


misses its target, not only because positive reason postpones judgment, butalso because it fails to do justice to an important principle of revealed reli-gion. The positive spirit is characterized by a “will to immediacy” that aimsto stay as close as possible to present experience and that refuses any otherguidance.75 Viewed from this perspective, the tradition of revelation is basedon something located in a remote past and hence a prejudice under suspi-cion. Since tradition and presence are mutually exclusive, the former canonly throw a misleading veil over the latter. This presupposition, however,ignores the fact that, for a believer, mediation by a tradition is an essentialcondition for the presence of revelation. From a religious point of view, im-mediately hearing and seeing revelation in a direct confrontation with Godis deadly for man.76 Only a prophet with superhuman powers is able to en-dure the tremendum, the terror that attends the presence of God.77

Prophetic mediation, which creates a safe distance with regard to the “inhu-man” character of revelation, is the source of tradition’s authority, Straussargues. By permanently representing revelation, it answers to the “will tomediacy” of the God-fearing believer, whose pious obedience is based onthe recognition that the tradition continually reveals and expresses God’swill. This principle of continuous mediation thus allows revelation to be ex-perienced by all believers as a covenant that is continually renewed:

If the will to mediated hearing of revelation is grounded in actualhearing of revelation, then the tradition of revealed religion, and withthis the obedience to the tradition and the fidelity to that tradition isgrounded in the actual hearing of the present revelation. Then all cri-tique of prejudice, and even more, all critique of the “rigidity”(Starrheit) of the tradition from the point of view of “experience,”cannot touch the seriousness and the depth of the will, grounded inimmediate hearing, to mediacy.78

In Strauss’s analysis, then, the believer’s “will to mediacy” appears asan equal opponent of the positive spirit’s “will to immediacy.” The conse-quences of this equality, moreover, do apply not only to revelation, but alsoto miracles in general. The positive critique, it is true, asserts that miraclesare unknowable to unbelieving reason, so that an impartial, scientific de-termination is impossible.79 However, Strauss asks, isn’t the mere intentionto ascertain scientifically itself based on a blind and premature dismissal ofthe specific doubt and expectation that attend the experience of miracles?Even the followers of Baal, for example, did not experience the events onMount Carmel as scientific observers, but with doubt, expectation, and thereadiness to see a miracle that would decide between Jehovah and Baal. It


is only because of this disposition that they were able to recognize themiraculous ignition of Elijah’s altar as a sign of the God of Israel and con-vert. Miracles, Strauss stresses, cannot create faith, but they presuppose aprincipal readiness to believing in a higher power.80 From this perspective,the position of the positive spirit is at least as problematic, he argues:

Just as the assertion of miracles is called in question by the positivemind, positive critique of miracles is called in question by the mindthat waits in faith or in doubt for the coming of the miracles. Theweapon which the positive mind believes it has discovered in the factthat the assertion of miracles is relative to the pre-scientific stage ofmankind, is taken away from the positive mind by the observationthat this fact permits the opposite interpretation. Is the will to “es-tablish,” which needs only to have become victorious for experienceof miracles to become impossible, itself something to be taken forgranted? Does not man come to his most weighty and impelling in-sight when he is startled out of the composure of observation bywhich facts are “established,” when he finds himself in the conditionof excitation, in which alone miracles become perceptible at all?81

While the positive spirit may have developed sufficient power to ex-plain the historical success of the critique of religion, its position is no moreor no less legitimate than that of religious orthodoxy. The historical resultsof the positive, scientific approach to the Bible are only valid within thecharmed circle of confidence in autonomous reason with regard to what isimmediately given. However, just this confidence is lacking in religious or-thodoxy. It regards reason as constitutionally incapable of discovering thetruth by its own lights, and thus in need of completion and perfection byrevelation. The latter, however, is never accessible without the aid of divinelight, so that an appeal to tradition is always required.

Thus, Spinoza’s conflict with revealed religion remains essentially un-decided, Strauss observes: both parties are in a deadlock. Even if Spinoza isable to defend his position against the claims of religious orthodoxy withincertain bounds, he remains incapable of refuting these claims. For this reason,the inquiry regarding the conditions and limits of the critique of religionmust focus on what, at least for Spinoza, is at stake in the conflict: the auton-omy, competence, and authority of reason. For this reason, Strauss devotesa large portion of his book to Spinoza’s debate with two orthodox opponentson this issue. In the fifteenth chapter of the Treatise, which discusses the re-lationship between theology and reason, Spinoza distinguishes between a“dogmatic” and a “skeptical” position: while the former acknowledges the


right and the competence of reason, the latter altogether denies “the certi-tude of reason” and makes it subservient to the authority of Scripture.82 Asthe main representative of the “dogmatic” position, Spinoza refers to MosesMaimonides, the great medieval Jewish thinker, while he attributes the“skeptical” position to a contemporary and opponent of Maimonides, “a cer-tain Rabbi Jehudah Alphakar.”83 According to Strauss, however, Alphakar’sview as Spinoza presents it is hardly distinguishable from the orthodoxCalvinist view of his time. Hence, Spinoza’s critique of the “skeptical” posi-tion can also be interpreted as a covert debate with Calvin.

Maimonides: The Limits of Reason and the Interest in Revelation

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) broke with the profound distrust of Jew-ish orthodoxy with regard to philosophy. In his great work, Guide of thePerplexed, he tried to reconcile reason and revelation by integrating thecentral articles of Jewish faith within a philosophical, more specificallyAristotelian framework. Although his attempt was eyed with suspicion anddisapproval, he succeeded in defending his position to such a degree that hecame to be regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of Judaism. His fameeven extended beyond his religious community: Thomas Aquinas, withwhom he is often compared, cites his work as an important influence. Pre-cisely because of its appeal to reason and philosophy, Maimonides’s posi-tion becomes susceptible to Spinoza’s critique, Strauss argues. However,this critique cannot proceed on the basis of the biblical text itself, for rea-sons that will sound familiar:

Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides on the basis of Scripture presup-poses that the literal meaning is the true meaning of Scripture. Thispresupposition is however rejected in principle by Maimonides sinceit would lead to conclusions that would contradict the revealed char-acter of Scripture. Therefore, before argument can be taken upagainst Maimonides on the basis of Scripture, his hermeneutics mustbe called into question.84

In the seventh chapter of the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinozasummarizes the basic tenets of Maimonides’s hermeneutics as follows. TheBible contains many passages that appear to contradict reason. In such cases,Maimonides asserts, the exegete is allowed to interpret the passages in ques-tion allegorically and assume that the literal, outer meaning hides an innermeaning that is in agreement with reason.85 For Spinoza, this approach is


unacceptable. He is astonished that Maimonides, who pretends to offer a rational exegesis, in fact simply adapts the biblical text to his personalviews.86 Moreover, he adds, the possibility of an allegorical interpretation ofthe Bible implies that the truth is predetermined, and this is merely a preju-dice. If Maimonides had envisaged a truly scientific, rational, and philo-sophical approach to the Bible, he should have focused exclusively on theliteral meaning, studying Scripture in accordance with the positive and ra-tional principles mentioned in the previous section. This truly scientific ap-proach would have revealed that the Bible has no epistemological valuewhatsoever. As Strauss argues, however, these arguments are based on Spin-oza’s biblical science. Since the latter presupposes the successful refutationof Maimonides’s hermeneutics, once again we are caught in a petitio prin-cipii: Spinoza starts from the legitimacy of the positive-scientific approachin order to argue that same legitimacy.87

Spinoza raises several other objections against allegorical exegesis.These, however, equally fail, according to Strauss, since they misinterpretMaimonides’s intention and design. The distinction between an inner andan outer meaning is part of Maimonides’s teaching on prophecy, or, asStrauss calls it, “prophetology.”88 This term is particularly apposite, sinceit reflects the attempt to integrate a central element of religious traditionwithin a philosophical framework. According to prophetology, revelation isan emanation of the divine intellect, by which the prophet is enlightened indirect contact with God. Because of the instantaneous, overwhelming, andsuperhuman character of this event, the prophet must transmit the divinemessage to the faithful in figurative terms, by means of similes and images.This he is able to do because his reason and imagination are perfectly de-veloped and act in perfect cooperation. Reason, which receives the emana-tion, uses images derived from the concrete, physical, and material world inorder to make understandable what is, in fact, abstract, immaterial, andpurely intelligible. The principle of allegorical exegesis is rooted in this col-laboration: it discloses the inner and purely rational meaning of the text be-hind the imagery that constitutes the outer meaning.

However, even if the principle of allegorical exegesis itself can be jus-tified, its purpose remains problematic: to harmonize the biblical teachingand the rational truth. In Spinoza’s view, this endeavor is absurd, since thetruth is not fixed in advance but has to be discovered by means of scientificinvestigation. In his dismissal, however, Spinoza overlooks a fundamentaldifference between his open concept of truth, knowledge, and science, andMaimonides’s closed concept. For Maimonides, the truth is indeed fixed:the scope of reason has been definitely circumscribed by Aristotle. Whereas


for Spinoza theoretical reason is autonomous and sovereign, for Mai-monides it is delimited and transcended by the “suprarationality” of revela-tion on the one hand, and by the apex of theoretical reason, Aristotle’sphilosophical teaching, on the other. This latter concept of science, ofcourse, is far better equipped to integrate reason and revelation than Spin-oza’s open concept.89

A similar misunderstanding occurs in Spinoza’s critique of prophetol-ogy. According to Spinoza, reason and imagination are fundamentally op-posed, so that the exceptional cooperation argued by Maimonides is eo ipsoimpossible. Even if Maimonides concedes that in general the imaginationis an obstacle to reason, his Aristotelian concept of knowledge enables himto make a decisive exception: reason can be committed to the truth to suchan extent that it exerts a positive influence on the imagination and subjectsthe latter without suppressing it. Spinoza, who views the imagination inCartesian terms, is unable to make this exception. This, Strauss argues,shows that his critique of prophetology presupposes the constitution ofmodern philosophy and thus the preliminary rejection of revelation.90

Since the Theological-Political Treatise operates on a prephilosophical level,however, Spinoza’s objections are not valid.

The difference between the two philosophical paradigms becomesvisible again with regard to biblical miracles. As we saw, Spinoza’s positivecritique views miracles as merely unsolved problems against the back-ground of scientific progress. Maimonides, on his part, attempts to accom-modate miracles, including creation, within the Aristotelian framework. Indoing so, however, he departs from the traditional view. Although he ac-knowledges the reality and the possibility of miracles, he downplays theirimportance with regard to faith, emphasizing the natural order and its laws.In his view, miracles are no infraction of God into his own order, but onlyan unusual and temporary change within the sublunary sphere, which ischaracterized by transience. In relation to the unchangeable heavenlyorder, miracles deserve to be given less significance than they are tradi-tionally accorded. Still, a problem remains, according to Strauss. Whencreation is structured with the aid of Aristotelian physics, miracles are ananomaly that detracts from its divine perfection. Maimonides solves thisproblem by arguing that an inscrutable God who creates the world is alsocapable of intervening in his creation. As opposed to Spinoza, he does notdeny the possibility of miracles, but he downplays their interest for humanreason. Their demonstrative power, to which tradition attaches great im-portance, dwindles when one is able to understand creation theoreticallyafter the manner of Aristotle.91


Besides the critique based on Scripture and the positive critique,Spinoza also deploys his metaphysical critique against Maimonides. In theEthics, divine understanding and divine will are identical, so that it is im-possible for God to trespass on the natural order by revealing a law that canbe broken by man. Maimonides likewise emphasizes divine unity, but hedoes so for a different reason. Strictly speaking, he suggests, it is inadmissi-ble to ascribe to God any positive attributes whatsoever, for he is one andindivisible, and any distinctions or attributions diminish this unity. Hence,human speech about God is always figurative. For Maimonides as opposedto Spinoza, God’s unity is inscrutable and transcends human comprehen-sion. By appealing to the inevitably figurative character of speech, he lim-its the scope of reason and thus of theoretical-philosophical analysis. Theauthority of reason and theory does not extend beyond the sublunarysphere: everything that surpasses this sphere also surpasses the power ofreason. This holds for the question regarding divine understanding andwill, but also for the question whether the world has been created or is eter-nal. According to Maimonides, reason can do no more than deduce thegreater probability of creation. Hence, it must be assisted by revelation.The latter does not contradict reason, but completes it and transcends itslimits. Spinoza’s metaphysical critique takes the radically opposed view-point that reason is autonomous and sovereign. Its radius encompasses theinfinite realm of nature, which is identical with God. Man’s philosophicalinvestigation of the natural order is therefore equivalent to understandingthe one divine substance. Theoria or philosophical speculation is the onlyway to attaining human perfection and felicity: intellectual love of God(amor intellectualis Dei). According to Spinoza, theoria is the highest humaninterest or concern, to which all other concerns are secondary.

This “radicalization of the theoretical interest,” as Strauss calls it, de-termines not only the theological, but also the political aspects of Spinoza’scritique of Maimonides.92 For Spinoza, the theoretical life is an individualmatter, reserved for the few sufficiently gifted. The majority of people islargely driven by passions and pursues other interests than the theoretical.For this reason, the majority of nonphilosophers require the authority ofreligion, in the purified and rationalized form advocated by Spinoza. Thisreligion of piety and charity mainly fulfills a practical, political purpose: itensures social cohesion and stability, and thus also the minimal conditionsfor the theoretical life.93

An important implication of this view is that politics does not possessa specific rationality distinguishable from the rationality inherent in the un-changeable workings of nature.94 On this issue, Strauss points to the marked


difference between Spinoza and another founder of modern politicalthought, Thomas Hobbes. For the latter, uncovering the specific rationalityof the political may be said to be the cornerstone of his work. In contrastwith Hobbes, Strauss observes, Spinoza’s political thought does not beginwith what is proper to human nature, but with nature as an encompassingwhole. This difference becomes apparent with regard to the concept of nat-ural law. Hobbes derives natural law from the human pursuit of self-preser-vation, which he considers to be a rational pursuit. For Spinoza, by contrast,the summum naturale ius, the highest natural law, is founded in the one andindivisible substance, in which rationality, right, and power coincide.95

Viewed from this cosmic perspective, the existence of all beings coincideswith their rationality and their power. Both the individual human being andthe state are mere units of power within the economy of nature.96 The ra-tionale of the state resides entirely in its function, the extent to which it suc-ceeds in developing enough power to regulate and harmonize the explosiveamalgam of individual passions and strivings into a durable whole.97 In thisprocess, religion can play an important role. However, between the ratio-nality of the philosopher, who is free of passions, and that of the state, a pro-found qualitative difference remains. The philosopher is beyond the state,even though he realizes that the stability of the state is important to his sur-vival as well. Because of this sober view, Spinoza’s political doctrine is oftentypified as a “political realism,” influenced by Niccolò Machiavelli, the op-ponent of “imaginary principalities” and thinker of the raison d’état. Straussfirmly rejects this characterization: Spinoza’s so-called realism is, in fact,prepolitical, since it is based on a completely apolitical, philosophical ac-count of the passions.98 For this reason, his anti-utopianism differs funda-mentally from that of Machiavelli. While the Florentine rejects utopia as anobstacle for a realistic understanding of politics, for Spinoza it is primarilyan obstacle on the kingly road toward the perfection of theoretical under-standing, the highest human interest.99

Maimonides, by contrast, does not subject the interests of politics tothe interests of theory. In his view, both equally receive their due from rev-elation, which in Judaism takes the form of law. The purpose of the Torahis to regulate all aspects of human life in accordance with divine will, so thatall those who obey its commandments may attain happiness. According toMaimonides, the purpose of the law includes theory: as distinguished frommerely human law, which only looks after the well-being of the body, thedivine law also envisages the perfection of the soul.100 This is borne out bythe fact that the Bible calls on man to understand the creator by studyingcreation. Maimonides interprets this exhortation as an authorization and


even an imperative to engage in theory after the manner of Aristotle. Thelatter, he points out, also regards the theoretical life as the endeavor to ac-quire knowledge of God, and hence as the way to attaining the perfectionof the soul. In this way, Maimonides lets the highest goal of the revealedlaw coincide with that of philosophy: the theoretical life is the most piouslife, the perfect realization of the law.

This does not do away with the fact that for Maimonides, too, the the-oretical life is primarily a solitary activity for the talented few. Unlike Spin-oza, however, he does not put society at the service of the speculative life.The goal of the Torah is that all members of the community shall know thetruth and live in accordance with it. After all, revelation is a crucial momentwithin general divine providence, God’s care for man.101 According to Mai-monides, providence is linked to the emanation of the divine intellect in thisway, that the higher human intellect is developed, the more it shares in theworkings of providence.102 While this accords a privileged place to theorywithin the purpose of the law, it adds a social-political dimension: thosewhose rationality is most developed are also responsible for supervising obe-dience to the law. In this way, revelation establishes a social hierarchy inwhich intellectual development and rationality are inextricably connectedwith political responsibility. This connection is exemplified by the prophet,who thereby surpasses both the philosopher and the lawgiver as such.

In Maimonides’s view, the divine law connects the pursuit of theoreti-cal knowledge of God to the care for society. Spinoza, by contrast, rejectsthis connection by drawing a sharp distinction between lex humana, thehuman law, and lex divina, the divine law. The latter, he argues, only enjoinsthe perfection of the individual human being: its purpose has no bearingwhatsoever on society. As a result, the Mosaic Law, which is directed at theJewish people as a collective, cannot be a divine law. Its elaborate code ofcommandments and prohibitions has only a political significance, and com-pliance has no immediate relevance to the welfare of the soul. The organiza-tion of society only plays a marginal and utilitarian role in fulfilling the divinelaw. Politics only pertains to the choice of the means used to satisfy the basicrequirements of life, which are of little importance from the point of view oflex divina. However, Strauss rejoins, this means that there is no intrinsic rea-son to reject Mosaic Law in favor of another law. In a utilitarian view of pol-itics, the Torah could just as well meet the elementary conditions set bySpinoza. What, then, is the actual reason for his dismissal? One possible ex-planation was already mentioned earlier: seventeenth-century orthodoxProtestantism justified its claims to power by invoking the example of MosaicLaw. Spinoza perceived these claims as a threat to both social stability and


the freedom of philosophy.103 In order to avert this danger, he felt compelledto disarm orthodoxy by calling into question the authority of Mosaic Law.

Convinced of the legitimacy and sovereignty of reason, Spinoza ele-vates the interests of philosophy above all other interests, including those of Judaism. His relationship to Judaism thus proves to be an important as-pect of his dispute with Maimonides, Strauss observes. According to Mai-monides, faith and obedience to Torah necessarily precede theoreticalactivity. In integrating Aristotelian philosophy and the Jewish tradition, andby using philosophy to buttress the main articles of faith, he aims to restoreto Jewish life its ancient splendor and strength. Thus, the interests of theoryconverge with the encompassing interest of the revealed law, Strauss asserts:“[Maimonides’s] argumentation takes its course, his disputes take place,within the context of Jewish life, and for that context. . . . Maimonides’s phi-losophy is based in principle and throughout on Judaism (vollzieht sich ingrundsätzlicher und stetiger Orientierung am Judentum).”104

For Spinoza this orientation is based on a prejudice that needs to betested by positive reason which has liberated itself from all prejudices. As aresult, he does not feel obliged to justify his position against Judaism. On thecontrary, he reverses the burden of proof and challenges Judaism to justify it-self before the impartial tribunal of reason. Hence, his trust in autonomousand sovereign reason proves to be conditioned throughout by a “radical andcontinuing distance from Judaism.”105 According to Strauss, this distance ischaracteristic of Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides in general: his rejection ofMosaic Law as well as of the intrinsic connection between theory and poli-tics, of prophetology, and of allegorical exegesis. In each case, the critique isbased on a “self-empowerment” of positive reason and the new concept ofscience that attends it, and thus on the basic immunity toward revelation andmiracles in general. This shows that the separation of philosophy and theol-ogy the Theological-Political Treatise aims at has in fact been carried throughalready before Spinoza has developed a single argument.

Underlying the difference in their relationship toward Judaism is afundamental disagreement concerning the power of reason and the humaninterest in revelation. For Maimonides, reason is limited on two accounts.On one account, its scope has been exhaustively circumscribed by the cor-pus aristotelicum, which is a catalog of all available knowledge of the sublu-nary world. On the second account, it is limited by certain questions itcannot answer independently since they surpass the sublunary sphere, likethe question regarding creation or eternity. These questions are so crucialthat man is unable to live without knowing the answers to them. Even in its


most perfected form, however, reason alone is unable to discover them.Hence, the “insufficiency” of reason is inextricably related to “man’s inad-equacy for the guidance of his own life.”106 Man has a vital interest in rev-elation, which alone can supply the truth. Hence, the interest in revelationprecedes faith in revelation: this, according to Strauss, is the fundamentalpostulate of Maimonides’s position. This assertion is worth keeping inmind; as we will see, Strauss will thoroughly revise this interpretation in thelight of further research.

Conversely, Spinoza’s ultimate presupposition is the fundamental adequacy or “sufficiency” of reason and man’s capacity to lead his own life.This postulate is decisive for his entire design in the Theological-PoliticalTreatise: before he can mobilize reason in a critique of revelation and theBible, he is compelled to counter the “insufficiency thesis” that underlies it.As Strauss observes, in fact Spinoza does so already in the rhetorical con-ditional sentence that opens the Treatise, “If men could govern all their affairs in accordance with a fixed plan.”107 For this reason, Strauss summa-rizes the conflict between Maimonides and Spinoza in the formula “insuf-ficiency of man—sufficiency of man,” emphasizing that this applies both onthe intellectual and the ethical and political level.

From his analysis, Strauss draws the following conclusions. The mostimportant one has already been mentioned: Spinoza’s attack on Mai-monides is based on a petitio principii, and thus fails to hit the mark. Eventhough Spinoza may appear to get an argumentative hold on Maimonidesbecause of the latter’s appeal to philosophy, the core of Maimonides’s po-sition remains intact. Spinoza is unable to refute the insufficiency thesiswithout already presupposing the sufficiency of reason. All he is able to dois counter the claims raised on behalf of religion against the sovereignty ofreason, by insisting on the ignorance and the openness of the positivespirit. This, however, does not do away with the fact that the positive spiritacquires its immunity by imposing itself on its own authority. In this re-spect, it does not differ from faith in revelation, Strauss remarks: “Thus thefree mind becomes free. It becomes what it is. It brings its potential into ac-tuality. It presupposes itself, as faith presupposes itself.”108 Thus, whatbegan as an attempt to refute culminates in a status quo: both opposingparties appeal to a premise that is founded in itself, and which as such is“believed in.” Thus, the opposition between Spinoza and Maimonidesamounts to “the antithesis of belief in sufficiency and belief in insuffi-ciency.” This antithesis becomes even more pointed when Spinoza faces his“skeptical” opponent, John Calvin.


Calvin: “Like Clay in the Potter’s Hand”

For Calvin, as for Maimonides, the highest human felicity consists in at-taining knowledge of God. Although this knowledge is present in eachhuman being in a very imperfect form, however, man is incapable of per-fecting it by his own lights. To this end, he needs additional guidance fromthe Bible, which confirms and supplements the inner knowledge. In orderto become amenable to the divine message, however, he must subject him-self to divine authority. In Calvin’s view, true knowledge of God cannot beseparated from pietas or obedient piety, which is a combination of fear,awareness of one’s sinfulness and the experience of one’s insignificancecompared to divine omnipotence.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin rejects philosophy andtheory wholesale. The view that human reason is capable of judging au-tonomously and free from prejudice is itself fraught with prejudice, he ar-gues. It is rooted in disobedience and displays a disturbing lack ofself-knowledge. Instead of providing knowledge of God, theory leads manaway from the one thing needful, and as such it is a source of pernicious er-rors. As Strauss puts it, “Theory, stripped of prejudices and presupposi-tions, theory which seeks first of all to examine cautiously and suspiciously,is thus viewed as in actual fact full of presuppositions: in the place of thefear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, it puts disobedience.”109

Whoever takes as his point of departure the complete and unconditionaltrust in his own rational capacities thereby reveals himself to be unwillingand insusceptible to the shock of conscience that is the precondition for di-vine grace, without which no correct understanding of Scripture is possi-ble. Blinded by self-love, pride, and complacency, he surrenders to thetemptations of the flesh, which for Calvin is the root of all evil.110

Because Calvin radically understands both the insufficiency of reasonand the inscrutability and omnipotence of God, every common ground dis-appears and his position becomes unassailable for Spinoza’s attempts atrefutation. To begin with, his critique based on Scripture fails: an impar-tial, immanent critique has no demonstrative power whatsoever, sinceCalvin accepts neither the criterion nor the method used by Spinoza. Thus,his principle of general accessibility of the biblical text founders on the pe-titio principii, Strauss observes:

It is a petitio principii if the critic takes as his point of departure that heis applying his critique to the teachings of human beings, that thecharacter which he shares with his opponent, “what is common to allmen,” is the only possible ground for the critique. Still less may the


critic invoke Scripture. For Scripture cannot be divested of that op-eration of grace by “the Holy Spirit” without which there can be nogenuine understanding of Scripture.111

Piety is an atheoretical and even antitheoretical attitude, which assuch cannot be refuted by theoretical arguments. The latter presupposethat reason is competent to judge independently, and this Calvin radicallydenies. The same holds for the fundamental question of whether man hasan intellectual, moral, and political interest in what is revealed by the Bible.In Spinoza’s view, what the believer calls “interest” is nothing but the rela-tionship of human fear to its own projections. If the fear is removed, the“interest” disappears, and submission is replaced by the freedom of the in-tellectual love of God.112 Aside from the fact that the theoretical attitudeincludes the rejection of any such preliminary interest, the argument onthis point is inadequate, Strauss finds. By opposing fear and love, Spinozaoverlooks the crucial distinction that Calvinism makes between profane orsuperstitious fear and the true fear of God. The latter is no slavish fear ofdanger or punishment, but is the basis for the pious love of God, which isable to inspire exceptional courage.

The fact that Spinoza ignores this crucial difference proves that theexperience of fear of God and awareness of sin are completely alien to him,Strauss observes.113 As a philosopher, he is compelled to deny the reality ofsin: if God or nature is operative in all human actions, as the Ethics asserts,no action can be sinful. In this context, Strauss quotes a letter in which Spin-oza cites the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, as the clay is in thepotter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand.”114 In the same letter, Spinoza arguesthat his strict determinism merely brings the Calvinist doctrine of predesti-nation to its logical conclusion. This assertion is ironic, of course: it ob-scures the fact that Spinoza’s understanding of man’s relationship to God isfundamentally opposed to the Calvinist understanding. In Spinoza’s view,this relationship is not characterized by sin, weakness, and insufficiency, butby man’s transience as a part of the eternal substance. Like all argumentsagainst orthodoxy, the denial of sin is based on the assertion of the auton-omy of reason and the denial of any vital human interest in a revealed truth.

A similar fate befalls Spinoza’s critique on the basis of reason, in par-ticular his positive critique of miracles. Where the legitimacy of theory isdenied outright, there is no place whatsoever for a philosophical concept ofnature. Unlike Maimonides, Calvin rejects the scholastic distinction be-tween the ordinary natural order and the exceptional, supernatural inter-vention of God. Since Calvin extends the latter over the whole of creation,


the former is wholly absent. In his understanding, there is no sublunarysphere with a proper regularity intelligible to unassisted human reason. ForCalvin, creation is characterized by irregularity and unpredictability, whichshow that God continually rules and guides his creation. As a result, the dif-ference between miracles and the ordinary course of the world disappears:every instance in the existence of creation is due to divine providence.115 Bythe same token, Calvin does not regard miracles as special events meant toengender or support faith. Man learns to perceive the permanence of God’spower and providence in creation only when divine grace has allowed hisinner light to develop into unconditional faith and submission.116

Because Calvin does not distinguish between the miraculous and thenatural, Spinoza is unable to drive a critical wedge between the two andplay them off against each other, Strauss explains: “Trust in God, obedi-ence to Him, discerns in each cosmic process . . . the hand of God at work.This attitude sees no reason to discriminate between ‘miracles’ and ‘na-ture.’ It is not bound to concede this distinction to the scientific mind.”117

Unlike Maimonides, Calvin does not defend revelation from a cosmologi-cal viewpoint, but from an anthropological perspective according to whichfaith and piety radically exclude theory as a legitimate human activity. Hisposition thus becomes immune to any argumentation based on scientificand theoretical grounds. Moreover, it enables Calvin to undermine thefoundation of Spinoza’s entire undertaking, Strauss observes: “Even if allthe reasoning adduced by Spinoza were compelling, nothing would havebeen proven. Only this much would have been proven: that on the basis ofunbelieving science one could not but arrive at Spinoza’s results. But wouldthis basis itself thus be justified?”118 This pivotal remark should be kept inmind, as we will return to it in the next chapter.

Still, Spinoza is able to reverse this question and maintain that theCalvinist rejection of theory is premature and unjustified. In support, hecan point to the discord within the orthodox camp, between the “dogma-tists” and the “skeptics.” But does this mean that he is able to tackle and de-cisively refute the underlying premise of an almighty, inscrutable, vengeful,and provident God? At most, Strauss holds, a positive critique can arguethat this premise is improbable and illogical, and that biblical evidence sup-porting it is implausible.119 In addition, Spinoza can invoke the rule of non-contradiction and argue that the Bible contradicts itself. However, thephilosopher is deprived even of this ultimate weapon, Strauss argues, fororthodoxy can respond that an inscrutable creator cannot communicate hiswill to man other than by means of contradictory speech.120

The only way in which Spinoza would be able to definitely refute thefundamental premise of orthodoxy is by proving “that in the universe of


beings there is no place for an unfathomable God.”121 Such a proof is possi-ble only in the form of a conclusive philosophical system in which every-thing is accounted for without recourse to an inscrutable God. This systemwould also provide the tailpiece for the positive critique, ensuring that its ar-guments no longer have to be hypothetical. According to Spinoza, the Ethicsaims to be just that: if, as it argues, God coincides with nature, the whole in-deed becomes fully intelligible.122 On closer inspection, however, this claimproves to be deeply problematic. Indeed, the intelligibility of God or natureand the concomitant impossibility of revelation and miracles follow logicallyfrom the fundamental principles of the Ethics. But it does not mean thatthese principles themselves are immediately obvious and acceptable. In fact,they are completely arbitrary, Strauss finds. Their meaning consists entirelyin their function: they determine the conditions that must be satisfied forthe whole or the cosmos to be intelligible. Their obviousness is only the re-sult of the fulfillment of these conditions. Whether Spinoza actually suc-ceeds in fulfilling them, however, is moot. Are the basic principles of theEthics clear and conclusive? Strauss asks. And if they are, are they necessar-ily true? Or are they only clear and conclusive because they leave out of con-sideration certain elements of the whole? As Strauss suggests, Spinoza maybe guilty of a certain reductionism in order to make the cosmos appear as atransparent and intelligible whole. At any rate, he fails to raise his accountbeyond the level of the merely hypothetical and conditional. What is more,fulfillment of the conditions presupposes the acceptance of the indepen-dence and autonomy of reason.123

This, Strauss concludes, shows that Spinoza’s position itself turns outto be based on a kind of faith, faith in the authority and sufficiency of reason,and the belief that the theoretical life is the one thing needful. As a result,Spinoza is compelled to combat the Calvinist assertion of reason’s insuffi-ciency by all possible means. Of course, the reverse also holds: inspired byits faith, Calvinism cannot leave the theoretical life undisturbed. At the endof his reconstruction of their debate, Strauss encounters two implacable op-ponents, each of whom radically denies the other any right to exist:

Thus Spinoza’s position and that of Calvin stand directly opposed toeach other, without being able to arrive at agreement or even at mu-tual toleration. These positions are not defensive positions, impreg-nable by virtue of a fundamental circle and on that very accountinadequate for attack. Rather, the passionate faith in the justice andtruth of his cause compels each of the two opponents—it could indeednot be otherwise—to the attack: to the opponent’s position every rightis denied. One is not yet satisfied by a smooth and clear-cut severance


of religion from theory. But revealed religion and theory fight, on thesame plane of the one and eternal truth, their life and death combat.124

Ultimately, the conflict between Spinoza and Calvin is a conflict of in-terests, the stakes of which are not only epistemological but also and primar-ily moral, Strauss adds: what human way of life is in accordance with thetruth?125 The “passionate faith” in the rightness of their cause makes bothopponents unwilling to even try to understand the other’s position. As a re-sult, each tends to combat a caricature of his opponent. When Calvin anath-emizes theory as a pretext for indulging in carnal lust, he forgets thatphilosophers predicate their activity on overcoming their desires and pas-sions, even if they admit that few actually succeed in doing so.126 Conversely,Spinoza ignores a number of features crucial to the self-understanding of re-vealed religion, like the distinction between profane fear and genuine fear ofGod, but also the “will to mediacy” characteristic of faith in revelation. Like-wise, he takes no notice of the fact that these features derive their meaningfrom fundamental premises that remain impervious to his critique.

However, if Spinoza’s critique of religion ultimately fails to reach, letalone affect its target, how can its historical success be explained? Straussasks. The effect of his attack on the power and the authority of revealed re-ligion is undeniable. The arguments and criticisms proffered in the Treatiseeventually came to form the basic vocabulary of successive generations ofAufklärer. As we saw in the previous chapter, even the young Strauss invokesthe success of Spinoza’s critique of religion as an indisputable and irre-versible accomplishment in his debate with the opponents of political Zion-ism. Nevertheless, the upshot of his present analysis is that the critique didnot really succeed in refuting the core of revelation. Hence, he now con-cludes, the key to its success must necessarily be sought outside of theory.

Happiness and Ridicule: The Epicurean Connection

When Spinoza attempts to penetrate the core of revealed religion, his ownposition becomes problematic. Faith in revelation, understood as pietas,has a foundation impenetrable to theoretical scrutiny, from which it is ableto call its opponent into question. More particularly, it is able to raise thequestion regarding the motive that underlies theory.127 When Strauss attempts to explain the historical success of the critique of religion, thisbecomes the focus of his inquiry. In this way, he rejoins his debate with Hermann Cohen, whose intensely critical reading of the Theological-Political Treatise also pointed to Spinoza’s ulterior motives. Although


Strauss praised Cohen for asking the right questions, he did not share hisanswers. As he argued, a “dutiful” historical interpretation suffices to showthat the Treatise is not exclusively nor primarily directed against Judaism,but against revealed religion as such, and that it aims at emancipating phi-losophy from the hold of theology. Nevertheless, Cohen’s initial questionremains valid: what is the motive underlying the attempt to emancipatephilosophy by attacking revealed religion? To answer this question,Strauss suggested, a different approach was needed from the biographicalspeculations proffered by Cohen.

In Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss develops this alternative ap-proach. Access to Spinoza’s motive, he argues, can be found through theprincipal blind spot of his critique of Calvinism: the crucial distinction be-tween profane and numinous fear, and the concomitant vital interest inrevelation posited by religious orthodoxy. By ignoring this difference,Spinoza is able to combat religion as a projection of profane fear that per-petuates human subjugation by leaving man in the grasp of passions anddesires. By the same token, liberation of the reader toward philosophy, theTheological-Political Treatise’s principal goal, is first and foremost liberationfrom the fear of an unpredictable and wrathful higher power, Strauss in-fers. Spinoza’s primary means to achieve this goal is scientific or theoreti-cal knowledge of the true causes that underlie fear-inspiring phenomenalike miracles and the experience of death. Such knowledge takes away theimmediate fear, but it also alleviates the more general human disquietudeby showing that the cosmos is characterized by a perfectly intelligible reg-ularity. In this way, Spinoza’s ultimate interest, and hence the motive thatinforms his efforts against revealed religion, becomes visible: foelicitas orhappiness as a condition of rest in which the soul contemplates the un-changeable order of nature. In Spinoza’s perspective, religion is a disturberof the peace who keeps the philosophically talented from pursuing and at-taining true happiness, and who therefore must be kept in check.

If such is the mainspring of Spinoza’s critique, however, his approachis not entirely novel. As Strauss points out, there is an ancient philosophictradition that aims to allay the fear of gods with a rational account of thecosmos: the Epicurean tradition. For Epicurus as for Spinoza, science is ameans to attaining a condition of serenity: knowledge of the true causes ofevents is in the service of the purity of happiness or eudaimonia. Similarly,both thinkers reject religious belief as ignorance of the true causes, and re-ligion as a source of fear and unrest. Ultimately, Strauss argues, the Epi-curean motive points to the desire to experience the world as a stable andunchangeable order independent of divine will and power.128


Clearly, this opposition recurs, albeit in an intensified form, in the“life-and-death struggle” discussed in the previous section. Spinoza’s philo-sophic worldview is aimed against religious orthodoxy’s radical denial ofcausality, which regards every instance in the existence of the world as a di-vine dispensation. Because of this relation, uncovering this Epicurean con-nection is an important moment in Strauss’s inquiry. While it marks abreakthrough in his analysis of Spinoza’s critique of religion, it also enableshim to pinpoint an essential characteristic of the Enlightenment: “Interestin security and in alleviation of the ills of life may be called the interestcharacteristic of the Enlightenment in general.”129 Of course, unlike Epi-curus, Spinoza and his followers do not face an ancient state religion, but arevealed religion with much more far-reaching claims. Because it appeals toa radical fear, this religion exercises an infinitely stronger hold on humanthought, as well as on social and political life. Still, the early Enlightenmentthinkers systematically remain attached to the traditional opposition be-tween science and superstition. This means that Spinoza’s blind spot actu-ally becomes the point of departure for their struggle, Strauss argues:

The Epicurean critique of religion continued effective during theperiod dominated by revealed religion. This was possible becausethe distinction asserted in revealed religion between superstitiousand genuine fear of God was denied or overlooked. Revealed reli-gion itself came to be contested as mere superstition.130

Nevertheless, compared to the Epicurean critique of religion, itsmodern counterpart does make its distinctive points. To begin with, theoriginal apolitical, even antipolitical concern for the peace of the individualsoul is now replaced by a concern for social and political peace. Concur-rently, revealed religion is actively contested as a source of social and polit-ical instability and held responsible for repression, intolerance and discord,inquisition, the persecution of other faiths, and bloody religious wars. Thesecond difference, related to the first, involves the exact point of attack.While Epicurus rejects the belief in higher powers because of its frighten-ing and disturbing effects, the Enlightenment critique of religion mainlyturns against its illusory character. Religion, it argues, covers reality with aveil of fancy, prejudice, and vain hope that puts happiness beyond man’sreach. The critique of religion, therefore, helps man liberate himself fromall illusions that prevent him from seeking and finding happiness in thepresent, Strauss notes: “whereas the Epicureanism of antiquity turnsagainst religion as against a fearsome illusion, in the modern evolution of


atheism what predominates is the struggle against illusionary happiness forthe sake of real happiness.”131 In this way, the critique of religion becomesa struggle of science against illusion that runs parallel with the politicalstruggle against those who perpetuate illusion in order to protect theirpower and further their own interests.

This brings us to a third aspect highlighted by Strauss. The view ofreligion as an obstacle on the way to human happiness is attended by a re-jection of the biblical doctrine of man’s original perfection and subsequentfall. When independent reason posits itself as a higher self-consciousnessover against a primitive and imperfect past, this “essentially historical op-position” implies that perfection and happiness are no longer located in aremote past, but in a future that is within man’s reach. The premise of orig-inal imperfection creates a historical space in which man has to rely on hisown efforts to attain happiness, by cultivating and developing his naturalpowers, aided by a scientific method: “The specific cast of mind of themodern centuries, the belief in method, in culture—let us not forget that‘culture’ means ‘culture of nature’—implies directedness towards the fu-ture, belief that perfection is to be sought in the future, the denial of per-fection as lost forever, as not to be recovered by human striving.”132

In its struggle, the modern critique of religion politicizes and histori-cizes the Epicurean motive, Strauss argues, leading to an increase in scalethat reflects the power and the influence of the “superstition” it combats.The radical interest in revelation, postulated by Calvinist orthodoxy, requires an equally radical counterposition: intellectually as well as morallyand politically, man is not dependent on a divine truth to attain perfection.Although his beginnings are imperfect, he is able to use his capacities to create the social and political conditions for his happiness. Culture, labor,and science project a world in which illusion, fear, and disquiet lose their ra-tionale, and thus relinquish their grip on man. In this world, the Epicureanmaxim “live covertly” (lathè biôsas) loses its meaning: in the modern critiqueof religion, the Epicurean “will to happiness” becomes the engine of a po-litical struggle against religion, superstition, and prejudice, in the name offreedom. Twenty-three years after Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, he will epit-omize the result of this transformation as “political hedonism, a doctrinewhich has revolutionized human life everywhere on a scale never yet approached by any other teaching.”133 As Strauss repeatedly stresses, theEpicurean motive precedes the rise of modern science, and guides its devel-opment. Undeniably, many Enlightenment thinkers explicitly referred toEpicurean atomism and naturalism as an inspiration for their scientific the-ories. However, their interest was determined by a preliminary striving for


human happiness. In other words, it is because they recognized their own an-tireligious motives in Epicurus’s work that they became interested in theEpicurean doctrine of nature. Even after the web of fear, superstition, andprejudice had been ruptured, and science had triumphed over religion, theEpicurean motive remained part and parcel of scientific progress.134

Combined, the two chief results of Strauss’s inquiry lead to the fol-lowing conclusion: the historical success of Spinoza’s critique of religiondoes not derive from the strength of his scientific arguments, but from themotive that inspires it, based on a specific interpretation of the human needfor serenity and stability. In Strauss’s analysis, each of Spinoza’s offensivearguments proves to be based on the petitio principii of the sufficiency ofreason. With regard to revealed religion, therefore, only a defensive positionis possible: unassisted reason can successfully ward off religious referenceto miracles by invoking immediate experience and the openness of inde-pendent reason. Mere defense does not suffice, however, since this wouldamount to recognizing and acknowledging the opponent. The latter mustbe defeated and eradicated, in the name of genuine human happiness. Buthow is this possible if theoretical arguments based on reason cannot get ahold? What other strategy, what other weaponry is available to Spinozaand his followers?

Strauss’s answer is remarkable, perhaps even surprising. In his view,the critique of religion’s most important weapon consists in ridiculing re-vealed religion, such as by pointing out the contrast between its fundamen-tal premises and the evidence adduced in the Bible. When, for example, theBible relates how God foretold the future name of a city to Moses, andwhen religious orthodoxy regards this as a demonstration of divine om-nipotence, the critique of religion can mock and deride this as a grotesquetriviality. The fact that orthodoxy asserts a necessary connection betweenthe fundamental premises of religion and every detail of the Bible is thusturned into an argument against orthodoxy. As Strauss remarks, the exam-ple above can easily be multiplied, and the critique of religion did so grate-fully and successfully. Nonetheless, he points out, ridicule only pertains tothe consequences of principles; it does not affect the principles themselves.As a result, its validity is limited:

This critique has a prospect of success, not by direct argumentation, butonly by virtue of the mockery that lends spice to the arguments, andlodges them firmly in the hearer’s mind. Reason must turn into “esprit”(Geist) if reason is to experience her more than royal freedom, her unshakable sovereignty, and to realize it in action. Through laughterand mockery, reason overleaps the barriers that she was not able to


overcome when she proceeded pace by pace in formal argumentation.But all the self-consciousness of the Enlightenment cannot conceal thefact that this critique, peculiar to the Enlightenment—historically effective as it was—does not reach the core of revealed religion, but isonly a critique of certain consequences and is therefore questionable.135

Although Strauss does not make the connection explicitly, we maysurmise that ridicule also plays an important role in the “essentially histor-ical consciousness” of positive reason. The latter can only differentiate it-self from religious faith by degrading it to superstition or a lower form ofconsciousness. Since it cannot do so by directly attacking the foundationsof religion, it can only succeed by mocking secondary elements of the Bibleas the products of a primitive, prescientific consciousness, as “prejudices ofthe ancient people.” In this way, reason’s leap over its own fundamentallimitations becomes a “progress” that renders it immune to miracle reportsand that makes the past appear as the realm of prejudice. By the sametoken, the offensive power of ridicule compensates the merely defensive ca-pacities of the critique of religion.

Farewell to Spinoza

After this long philosophical, theological, and historical excursion, let us re-turn to the quaestio iuris that initiated and guided Strauss’s inquiry into Spin-oza’s critique of religion. Did the critique really reach its target? Did Spinozaeffectively refute or have an impact on revealed religion in general, and Jew-ish religion in particular? Were modern Jews justified in breaking throughtheir isolation, entering historical reality and opening themselves to contactand exchange with Europe? From an analysis of the main argument of hisbook, we may conclude that, according to Strauss, the answer to these ques-tions is, on the whole, negative. The critique of religion missed the core of itstarget and left religious orthodoxy largely intact in its faithful obedience tothe revealed law of an inscrutable creator. All Spinoza could legitimately dowas strike a purely defensive attitude based on belief in the sufficiency andautonomy of reason. Since no effective theoretical, philosophical, and scien-tific arguments were available to stage an offensive, he had to resort torhetorical means, excoriating and mocking his opponent. Motivating this en-deavor was the Epicurean motive, which opened the prospect of an ultimatevictory: the scientific construction of a disenchanted world.

If this conclusion is correct, however, what is the significance ofSpinoza’s critique of religion for the interests of Judaism? Strauss asks.Spinoza’s claim to “greater honesty” in his reading of the Bible, showing


the real Jewish past, is based on the problematic assumption that the Bibleis of human origin, and that unassisted reason is competent and authorizedto study it. These assumptions, however, can be fundamentally challengedand countered by Jewish religious orthodoxy. In the latter’s view, to un-derstand and determine what is “honest” and “real” is possible only from acondition of faith and submission. Hence, the “reality” in which Judaismhad an interest throughout its long past differs fundamentally from the “re-ality” Spinoza’s biblical science claims to lay bare. Between the two con-ceptions yawns the same chasm that separates the world of the believerfrom that of the unbeliever. The “greater honesty” of Spinoza’s scientificmethod consists in the willingness to ignore what for the orthodox readingis a conditio sine qua non. This willingness, however, is based on presupposi-tions that are no less problematic than those of orthodox piety.

Against the basic principles of orthodox exegesis, Spinoza can musterno conclusive theoretical argument without committing a petitio principii.Hence, it is difficult to imagine in what way the results of his positive bibli-cal science could ever affect, let alone promote, the interests and prioritiesof Judaism. From a religious perspective, the world of tradition has no im-mediate need to be enlightened, let alone dismantled, from without. More-over, as Strauss repeatedly underlines, the theological dimension is inevitablyconnected to the political dimension. Strictly speaking, he argues, Spinoza’sstruggle for the autonomy of science and the state had nothing to do with the Jewish interest. His attempt to revive his readers’ confidence in reasonwas based on a preliminary distancing with regard to Judaism, which couldnot be bridged subsequently. Both in its basic principles and in its goals, theTheological-Political Treatise passed by the core of Judaism without so much asgrazing it. As a result, the solution to the Jewish Question as a theological-political problem it offered was bound to fail.

Without doubt, Strauss’s findings profoundly change his perceptionof the process of Einwirklichung, the end of Jewish exile and the reentry intohistory. This holds, to begin with, for his view on the process of emancipa-tion and assimilation. Initially, we may recall, he hailed the success of thecritique of religion as “the decisive cause of what is known as assimilation,which therefore is Jewishly legitimate also from this perspective.”136 In thelight of his inquiry, this “Jewish legitimacy” has become deeply question-able. In 1932, two years after Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss publishesan article entitled “The Testament of Spinoza.”137 In this article, he con-cludes that the arguments modern Jews borrowed from Spinoza in order tojustify their emancipation and assimilation to the European tradition havelost their force. In this way, it has become apparent that Spinoza’s critique


has no intrinsic relationship with, and thus no relevance for, the Jewish con-text, since there is nothing particularly Jewish about his philosophy.

However, Strauss emphasizes, this not only applies to assimilation,but also to the movement that evolved from it as both a continuation and acorrective. As Strauss goes on to explain, political Zionism equally lacks anintrinsic connection with Judaism. When Spinoza discusses the possibilityof a restoration of the Jewish state in the third chapter of the Treatise, hedoes so in a markedly detached and noncommittal way:

Spinoza does not actually wish for or demand the restoration of theJewish state: he merely discusses it. As if condescending from theheight of his philosophical neutrality, he leaves it to the Jews to lib-erate themselves from their religion and thus to obtain for themselvesthe possibility of reconstituting their state.138

Neutrality, Strauss argues, is the key to Spinoza’s testament. Thoughborn a Jew, he addressed the problems of Judaism as an outsider and aphilosopher, from the perspective of a modern, political-hedonistic conceptof the human interest. From that same perspective, he suggested—as it werein passing—a solution that was no more than an afterthought in the marginsof his critique of religion. Like the latter, however, this solution presupposesthe distance with regard to Jewish interests, and as such, it has no intrinsicbearing on these interests. Like the process of assimilation, it comes fromthe outside and leads back to the outside. Based on a preliminary break withJudaism, it requires a similar break from the addressee, who must relinquishhis Jewish identity. Hence, Strauss concludes, there is no sense in continu-ing to venerate Spinoza either as a great Jew or as the father of Jewish eman-cipation, assimilation, and political Zionism. Like his perception of theJewish Question as a theological-political problem, strictly speaking the so-lutions he proposed are of no use to the Jews as Jews.139

Small wonder, then, that in “The Testament of Spinoza” Strauss begins to bid farewell, not so much to Spinoza as to his legacy, biblical sci-ence, and political Zionism. This event, however, is all but clamorous. Asmentioned in the previous chapter, only in 1935 does Strauss hint at the factthat he has taken final leave of his youthful political commitment. And onlyin his autobiographical writings of the 1960s does he spell out the reasons inmore detail. On this occasion, he points to the fact that political Zionismconceived of the difficult situation of modern Judaism as a problem capableof receiving a definite solution. The “Jewish Question,” he argues, is aspecifically modern concept, one of the many abstractions that circulated in


the nineteenth century. Like the “Social Question” and the “Labor Ques-tion,” it was part of an understanding of history as something man can cre-ate, direct, and purify of its contradictions and turbulences. As a result,political Zionism approached the Jewish problem primarily as a generalhuman problem, and only secondarily—if at all—as a specifically Jewishproblem.140 This approach, however, ran counter to the Jewish religioustradition, according to which the restoration of the Jewish nation was de-pendent on the coming of the Messiah, sent by God to liberate, redeem, andrestore. As Strauss observes in retrospect, the goals of political Zionism hadbecome possible through a break with this messianic hope: “This projectimplied a profound modification of the traditional Jewish hopes—a modifi-cation arrived at through a break with these hopes.”141 While expressinggreat admiration for the accomplishments of the Zionist project, the olderStrauss leaves no doubt that he eventually came to regard political Zionismas fundamentally insufficient because of this break. Its solution was predi-cated on a complete redefinition of the Jewish Question within a modern,purely political and thus alien framework. In this way, the core issue wasavoided and left intact: political Zionism “could not solve the Jewish prob-lem because of the narrowness of its original conception, however noble.”142

The young Strauss, however, remains reticent about the consequencesto be drawn from his study of Spinoza. Thus, some important questions re-main unanswered. If, as he concludes, Judaism is not even the addressee ofSpinoza’s testament, and if neither political Zionism nor the new theologyoffer a solution to the Jewish Question as a theological-political problem,how should one attend to the Jewish interests in modernity? To the extentthat his inquiry answers the quaestio iuris in the negative, doesn’t it point toan unqualified return to Jewish orthodoxy and the old theology as “the onlycourse compatible with sheer consistency or intellectual probity”?143 Weshould not forget that in the book Strauss tacitly retracts the accusation he had thrown at the orthodox opponents of political Zionism. By placingSpinoza in the Epicurean tradition, he admits that the orthodox censure of assimilation and political Zionism as apikorsuth or Epicureanism was, infact, justified.

On a number of occasions, however, Strauss makes clear that this wasby no means his intention. The most important reason is that he holdshimself to be incapable of an unqualified return in the first place. Shortlyafter Spinoza’s Critique of Religion is published, he writes a letter to his col-league and kindred spirit Gerhard Krüger, then a professor of philosophyin Marburg, in which he explains with particular frankness the personalmotives that led him to his inquiry:


To me, only one thing was clear: that I cannot believe in God. I putthis to myself in the following way: there is an idea Dei innata, omnibushominis communis [innate idea of God, common to all men]; to thisidea I can give or refuse my assensus [assent]; I believed that I had torefuse it; I had to make clear to myself: Why? I had to justify myselfbefore the tribunal (Forum) of the Jewish tradition; and without anyphilosophical-historical reflection (geschichtsphilosophische Reflexion),simply because I would not have considered it defensible to give up, out of frivolousness and convenience, a cause for the sake ofwhich my ancestors took upon themselves everything conceivable(alles nur Denkbare).144

Seeking to justify his unbelief as a political Zionist, and out of loyaltyto his Jewish heritage, Strauss felt compelled to revisit the conflict betweenmodern philosophy and religious orthodoxy in its most radical and mostfundamental form. As he goes on to explain to Krüger, the result of his in-quiry was that on the whole, Jewish orthodoxy was indeed correct in casti-gating the unbeliever as an Epicurean. Nevertheless, he significantly addsthat not every kind of unbelief is necessarily of Epicurean origin. Even ifthe success of the critique of religion and of the Enlightenment as a wholewas chiefly due to its tactics of ridicule, the principle of the defensive cri-tique seemed to hold its own against orthodoxy. If Spinoza’s unbelievingrationalism proves to be untenable, this does not yet mean that every formof unbelieving rationalism is untenable. Hence, further scrutiny is neces-sary. Moreover, in the autobiographical preface to the Spinoza book hementions another important impediment to an unqualified return. SinceSpinoza’s critique of religion was aimed against revealed religion as such,demonstrating its ultimate failure implies that orthodoxy based on revela-tion as such emerges unbeaten:

The victory of orthodoxy through the self-destruction of rationalphilosophy was not an unmitigated blessing, for it was a victory not ofJewish orthodoxy but of any orthodoxy, and Jewish orthodoxy basedits claim to superiority to other religions from the beginning on itssuperior rationality.145

Thus, even from the perspective of religious orthodoxy, a leap offaith cannot solve the problem of the Jewish individual who specificallywishes to remain loyal to his ancestral legacy, as there is no intrinsic com-pelling reason why he should return to his own tradition rather than an-other. To say the least, the study of Spinoza showed that the original battle


between unbelieving Enlightenment and believing orthodoxy is essentiallyundecided. At the same time, rejecting an unqualified return to orthodoxyseems to amount to siding with unbelieving reason. This consequence isanything but unproblematic: Strauss repeatedly suggests that the self-con-fidence of positive reason is based on a form of faith. The principal claim ofradical Enlightenment, however, was that it was based on true knowledge,not on faith. This problem makes further investigation of the conflict allthe more pressing. Thus, the book on Spinoza in no way signifies the endof Strauss’s grappling with the theological-political problem. In the nextchapter, we will see that his search takes a surprising and decisive turn.


77

CHAPTER 3

The Second Cave

. . . there was never anything so deerly bought,as these Western parts have bought the

learning of the Greek and Latine tongues.

—Hobbes, Leviathan

The Crisis of the Enlightenment:Jacobi, Mendelssohn, and the Pantheism Controversy

In Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss concludes, “Even if all the reasoningadduced by Spinoza were compelling, nothing would have been proven.Only this much would have been proven: that on the basis of unbelieving sci-ence one could not but arrive at Spinoza’s results. But would this basis itselfthus be justified?”1 As we saw, the book raises serious doubts on this point.What is more, Strauss subsequently informs the reader that the crucial ques-tion was already raised in an exemplary manner by someone else: “It wasFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi who posed this question and by so doing lifted theinterpretation of Spinoza—or what amounts to the same thing, the critiqueof Spinoza—on to its proper plane.”2 The announcement is singular, both inthe literal and in the figurative sense: while Strauss indicates that Jacobi’s cri-tique of Spinoza is nothing less than a model as well as a yardstick for his owninvestigation, it is the only reference to Jacobi in the whole work.

Today, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) is mostly rememberedas a literary critic and author who paved the way for Romanticism and theSturm und Drang movement. In his day, however, he was also a renownedphilosophical opponent of the Enlightenment. In the genesis of Strauss’swork, he is more or less the connecting piece between what precedes and whatfollows the Spinoza book. In 1921, Strauss obtained a doctorate in philosophy

with a dissertation on Jacobi’s critique of Enlightenment rationalism.3 As wewill see, his findings did play an important role in his subsequent approach toSpinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. After the publication of the Spinozabook in 1931, the Akademie assigns Strauss as a coeditor to the jubilee editionof the collected works of Moses Mendelssohn, the great Jewish thinker andleader of the moderate Enlightenment.4 Strauss’s most extensive and most in-teresting contribution consists in an incisive and insightful investigation intothe so-called Pantheism Controversy, a polemic between Mendelssohn andJacobi that shook the intellectual world of eighteenth-century Germany. Atthe heart of the controversy was the legitimacy of the Enlightenment, dis-puted by Jacobi and defended by Mendelssohn. Interestingly enough, the de-bate’s main focus was the philosophy of Spinoza. For this reason, a closer lookat Strauss’s writings on Jacobi and Mendelssohn is indispensable in order tounderstand how he continues his research after the Spinoza book.

In his dissertation, Strauss shows how Jacobi attacks the foundationsof Enlightenment rationalism on two separate, albeit closely related, ac-counts: knowledge, on the one hand, and morality and politics on the other.On the level of knowledge, his critique is directed against Descartes’smethod of universal doubt, the core of modern rationalism. In Jacobi’s view,the Cartesian method attempts to secure the reality of Being by reducing itto its indubitable conditions of possibility, from which point it subsequentlytries to reconstruct Being rationally. According to Jacobi, this operationamounts to nothing less than a systematic reduction of Being to non-Beingor Nothingness, a procedure for which he coined the term “Nihilism.” Allthat is left is the pure thinking subject, which thereby becomes the source ofreality and the sole guarantor of the knowability of reality. Strauss para-phrases this view of the Cartesian project as follows: “We can only under-stand what we can produce. The philosopher who wants to understand theworld must therefore become creator of the world.”5

Moreover, according to Jacobi the Cartesian procedure is deliberatelyselective: it filters out those aspects of the object that resist reduction and ra-tional reconstruction. In this way, it ignores and even destroys certain vitalelements that it can never replace or reconstruct. These elements point towhat he calls “natural certainties” (natürliche Gewissheiten), which are knownprior to any attempt at rational knowledge and therefore constitute the pos-sibility of such knowledge. From this point of view, both the source ofknowledge (human understanding) and its object (reality) are “irrational” or,rather, “suprarational” (überrational). They come to light in propositions thatare grasped with intuitive immediacy and therefore cannot be the object ofsubsequent rational proof, such as “I am” and “There is a world outside of


me,” but also “There is a God.”6 As a result, Jacobi rejects Kant’s notion ofGod as a regulative idea of reason. The latter, he argues, reverses the origi-nal primacy of God with regard to reason, and thus is devoid of any content,both theoretically and ethically useless.7

Because of its deliberate negation of these natural certainties as limitsof knowledge, Cartesian rationalism and the modern sciences based on itcan be no more than “the organization of ignorance,” Jacobi holds. For ifthe method of rational demonstration exerts its power within a domain lim-ited by irrational and transcendent certainties, a strict determinism canapply only within those same bounds. Unable to fully justify the precedenceof radical doubt over natural certainty, it can never attain to the truth, sinceit is based on an initial surrender of the truth. Rationalism sacrifices theoryor contemplation in order to radically exclude irrationality. In Strauss’swords, “Doubt is the renunciation of the theoretical life (truth) for the sakeof the theoretical evil (irrationality) that is necessarily related to it.”8

On the level of ethics and politics, Jacobi’s argument runs closely par-allel to his epistemological critique. In this case, his polemic is aimedagainst the idea of autonomy at the heart of the moral and political pro-gram of the Enlightenment. In his dissertation, Strauss summarizes themain contention as follows:

Autonomism is the ethical form of general doubt, of the principle ofmodern culture, which invokes the autonomy of religious conscience,of scientific reason and of moral legislation (sola fides, sola ratio, “onlya good will”). In opposition, Jacobi emphasizes that, in ethical mat-ters, it is simply unnecessary for the acting subject to understand thenorm and to affirm it out of its own insight. It is not the case that in-sight precedes and obedience follows, but precisely the reverse: onlyout of obedience, as a result of following the norm, from the pene-tration of the norm into the center of our lives as a consequence ofobedience, does moral insight emerge.9

Just as the principle of radical doubt and belief in proof and demon-stration express a refusal to submit to the transcendence of reality, so doesthe concept of autonomy disclose a rejection of the ethical norms inherentin this reality, incited by man’s proud desire to be the sole source of moral-ity. Correspondingly, just as it leads to organized ignorance and determin-ism on the level of knowledge, so does rationalism lead to atheism andfatalism on the level of morality and politics, Jacobi asserts. Its claim to thecontrary, rationalism is incapable of replacing what it has destroyed, unableto establish morality on purely immanent grounds.

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The intrinsic relationship between epistemology, ethics, and politicspostulated by Jacobi explains why his opposition to the Enlightenment takesthe form of a critical discussion of Spinoza. The latter, in Jacobi’s view, exemplifies the defiance of Cartesian rationalism in the face of transcen-dence. In his introduction to Mendelssohn’s contributions to the PantheismControversy, Strauss recalls how Jacobi locates the root of rationalism in“the tendency to prove everything and to accept nothing as given; if one fol-lows this tendency honestly, i.e., without compunction, it leads to Spin-ozism, i.e., to atheism and fatalism . . . the origin of the tendency to proveeverything is the will of man not to be dependent on a truth that transcendshim, the will ‘not to obey the truth, but to command it,’ pride, vanity.”10

With unrivaled clarity, Jacobi argues, Spinoza’s thought shows that thecommon root of the Enlightenment’s philosophy and politics is a rebelliousand revolutionary effort to liberate man from the authority of transcen-dence. As Strauss goes on to note, Jacobi was “still too closely tied to thetheistic tradition not to be compelled to see in atheism (and ‘Spinozism isatheism’) a result of anti-theism, of the revolt against God.”11

According to Jacobi, however, the motive underlying this revolt provedto be at least as tyrannical as that of its putative opponent: Descartes andSpinoza heralded a new metaphysical despotism of autonomous demonstra-tive reason, which found its political complement in the new political despo-tism of Hobbes’s Leviathan. His objections notwithstanding, Jacobi respectedboth Spinoza and Hobbes for the consistency and rigor of their thinking. Infact, he preferred these “classics of despotism” to the German Aufklärer ofhis time. What he perceived as their halfhearted rationalism and their readi-ness to compromise with autocratic regimes provoked his aversion to such anextent that he went so far as to defend the ideal of a liberal state.12 Neverthe-less, he remained intensely critical of rationalism, because of the lack of jus-tification and the “nihilism” of Cartesian doubt.

Claiming at least equal justification, Jacobi’s own philosophic doc-trine takes precisely this deficit as its point of departure. His procedure isfirst to pursue rationalism to its ultimate consequences, up to the pointwhere its fatalism, atheism, and nihilism become apparent, as well as itsrootedness in ignorance. The knowledge of this ignorance (Wissen desNicht-Wissens) then becomes the basis for a salto mortale: a leap out of ra-tionalism and nihilism into faith or Glaube, motivated by the willingnessand the courage to take the risk of believing reality instead of doubting it.As Strauss emphasizes, the concept of Glaube at the heart of Jacobi’s doc-trine is not primarily religious: it comprises both “faith” and “belief” in theHumean sense, according to which human knowledge is ultimately based


on indemonstrable beliefs. In this respect, it proved to be a most powerfulweapon in Jacobi’s polemic against the Enlightenment, for it enabled himto argue that even the choice for rationalism and demonstration rests on aprimary belief, an initial act of faith.13

In Jacobi’s view, Glaube is not only an epistemological but also, andeven primarily, an ethical category: affirmation of the transcendence of re-ality is the basic prerequisite for true virtue (Tugend ), which in its turn isthe necessary condition for true knowledge. Without the recognition of hisheteronomy and of the necessity of loving obedience to God’s commands,man can never hope to attain true knowledge. In fact, Jacobi goes so far asto equate virtue and knowledge: the Platonic character of this identifica-tion, far from being accidental, actually points to the foundations of histhought, Strauss emphasizes. According to Jacobi, the history of philoso-phy is determined by the predominance of one of two typical theoretical at-titudes, whereby each type is rooted in a more general type of intellectualand moral attitude. The first, which Jacobi dubs “Platonic,” is character-ized by nobility, audacity, confidence, faith, and love, and is therefore ableto gain access to truth and virtue.14

The other type, called “non-Platonic,” displays the opposite qualities:baseness, apprehension, diffidence, distrust, disbelief, doubt, and pride, andaccordingly the inability to attain truth and virtue. According to Jacobi, thenon-Platonic attitude has become dominant in modern philosophy, and thisdecline has reached its nadir in the age of the Enlightenment. The latter, inspite of its earthly accomplishments, is animated by a Cartesian fear of theimmediacy of transcendent reality, and characterized by the subsequent at-tempt to circumvent its claims. Faced with what he perceives to be the direconsequences of this refusal, Jacobi’s doctrine of Glaube is an emphatic at-tempt to restore the Platonic attitude. Through a change in morality, it seeksto reaffirm the transcendence of reality, with a view to reinstating what hasbeen lost and thus accomplishing a renewal of philosophy.15

Although Strauss’s dissertation is largely a technical analysis of Jacobi’s position, a number of elements characteristic of his approach proveto be influential in his ulterior investigations. The first of these concerns thecritique of Cartesian methodical doubt. Very likely, Jacobi’s challenging thelegitimacy of radical doubt informs Strauss’s question in Spinoza’s Critique ofReligion, mentioned at the beginning, whether “the basis of unbelieving sci-ence” underlying Spinoza’s philosophy is justified. For, as he argues in thesame book, it is precisely with an appeal to Cartesian doubt that Spinoza ex-cludes both the possibility of miracles in general and of prophecy in partic-ular (as a miraculous collaboration of reason and imagination).16 In the same

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context, Jacobi’s comment on the selective character of methodical doubtmay very well lie at the basis of a crucial question concerning the Ethics,which the later Strauss articulates as follows: “But is Spinoza’s account clearand distinct? . . . Is its clarity and distinctness not due to the fact that Spin-oza abstracts from those elements of the whole which are not clear and dis-tinct and which can never be rendered clear and distinct?”17 In one of hisbest-known works, Natural Right and History (1953), he seems to answer thisquestion in the affirmative, when criticizing modern philosophy’s “dog-matic disregard of everything that cannot become an object, that is, an ob-ject for the knowing subject, or the dogmatic disregard of everything thatcannot be mastered by the subject.”18

Second, among the elements of transcendent reality that are not andcannot be rendered clear and distinct under the auspices of rational demon-stration, Jacobi gives pride of place to the existence of God. Against Kant,he argues that, as Strauss puts it in his dissertation, “The [philosophical] sys-tem must accommodate itself to the existence and meaning (Sinn) of God;the fundamental religious phenomenon may not be twisted (umgebogen) forthe sake of the system.”19 Interestingly enough, we see Strauss himself mak-ing frequent use of a similar argument in his various discussions with cul-tural Zionism, Jewish orthodoxy, and the so-called return movement.20

This brings us to what may be called the “theological-political” dimension of Jacobi’s position. As we have seen, he subordinates the episte-mological question to the moral and political question, and focuses his cri-tique on the underlying ethical-intellectual attitude of Enlightenmentrationalism. This approach is akin to Strauss’s approach in Spinoza’s Critiqueof Religion: like Jacobi, he concentrates on the motive that animates Spin-oza’s attack on revealed religion. Thus, he points out that Spinoza’s theo-retical critique, according to its own view of religion as based on obedienceand faith, necessarily presupposes disobedience and unbelief. As a result, acritical reading of Spinoza must concentrate on “the ‘Why?’ of theory as the‘Why?’ of disobedience and unbelief. This ‘Why?’ precedes all theory.Rather than a theoretical insight or conviction, it is a motive.”21 Subse-quently, Strauss traces this motive to the Epicurean tradition and its attemptto relieve the human condition by liberating man from fear of the gods, thecause of the greatest unrest and the gravest crimes. On the basis of this con-nection, he argues, “Interest in security and in alleviation of the ills of lifemay be called the interest characteristic of the Enlightenment in general.”22

As such, it animates Spinoza’s construction of a world in which there is noplace for an inscrutable God, nor for a revealed law teaching man what isgood and what is evil.


Like Jacobi, Strauss argues that this concern, though justified andpowerful, makes modern rationalism selective, in that it necessarily aban-dons or represses certain elements in order to be able to uphold itself.Thus, he finds, Spinoza ignores the crucial distinction between profane, su-perstitious fear and the genuine fear of God that is a precondition for thelove of God and obedience to the revealed law. Driven by a Cartesian “willto immediacy,” he is incapable of understanding the “will to mediacy” ofthe faithful, as a response to the enormity of revelation that inspires obedi-ence and loyalty to tradition. Spinoza’s success in mobilizing the “will toimmediacy” in his critique of religion distracts our attention from the factthat it is animated by a motive that is no less problematic than that of revealed religion.

On these and other points, Strauss appears to have undergone the in-fluence of Jacobi’s thought. For both, the inquest into the motive of theEnlightenment points to a revolutionary antitheism animated by proudhuman reason and self-postulating, and therefore deeply problematic. Inhis dissertation, Strauss even goes so far as to subscribe to Jacobi’s typolog-ical characterization of modernity as an age of fear, distrust, and pride:

In any case, it seems to us that a specific moment of modern cultureis viewed here for the first time in such a comprehensive manner.How little one has reason to regard—and to disregard—this expres-sion as a mere circumstance of Jacobian sentiment, is made evidentmost clearly by the fundamental agreement in which it finds itselfwith the results of the research of contemporary sociologists (such asTroeltsch, Sombart, Max Weber, Scheler).23

However, Strauss immediately goes on to qualify his assent by addingthat this does not mean he also shares the strong evaluative judgment (Be-wertung) Jacobi appends to it. At this early stage, Strauss is less dismissiveregarding the claims of modern rationalism, even if in many ways he sharesJacobi’s insight into its flaws. Thus, he makes the critical remark that, al-though Jacobi is fundamentally aware of the scope of Cartesianism as “ageneral philosophic principle of method,” he fails to do justice to “its pro-found practical legitimacy (tiefes sachliches Recht).”24 As a critical response toCartesian doubt, the foundation of Jacobi’s doctrine of Glaube seems to beat least as questionable as that of its opponent. Accordingly, in Spinoza’sCritique of Religion, though viewed with an increasingly critical eye, ratio-nalism is still treated with more impartiality than is meted out by Jacobi.25

In a different form, this reservation is also visible on the ethical-politicallevel. Commenting on Jacobi’s defense of heteronomy, Strauss notes that it is

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basically the expression of the principle of traditionalism or, to be more exact,conservatism: “The principle of tradition—which doesn’t mean the recogni-tion of a particular tradition. Rather, one should say: principle of conser-vatism.”26 To the extent that the “leap of faith” implies the espousal of theprinciple of traditionalism, it leaves undetermined what particular tradition isembraced. Nevertheless, Jacobi insists that the leap of faith necessarily re-quires an espousal of the Christian tradition. Even though he justifies thisview by equating the principle of Christianity with the absolute principle ofreligion as such, this cannot hide the fact that, as Strauss puts it, “the difficultproblem of the specification (Besonderung) of the highest moral norm does notexist as a theoretical problem for Jacobi.”27 As a result, the leap of faith bearsthe mark of decisionism, in its attempt to affirm what, according to Jacobi’sown doctrine, is in no need of affirmation. In exposing the act of faith at thebasis of rationalism, the Jacobian option against Cartesian doubt succeeds inrestoring the balance, but it fails to do better than its opponent.

These and other considerations suggest that Jacobi’s influence onStrauss’s early thinking, though certainly not negligible, is neither as deci-sive nor as univocal as it appears to be. Although Jacobi put him on the trackof the crucial question regarding the “basis of unbelieving science,” Jacobi’sanswer to this question did not satisfy him. In order to see how Straussfound his bearings in this quandary, we must take a closer look at his intro-ductions to Moses Mendelssohn’s collected works. Written between 1931and 1937, they are of particular interest, not only because they reveal a pro-found knowledge of Mendelssohn’s thought, but also because they focus onhis dispute with Jacobi, which came to be known as the Pantheism Contro-versy. Above all, they suggest that Strauss had begun to find a way out of thequandary in which he found himself. Since both the Pantheism Controversyand its aftermath have been amply and excellently documented from a vari-ety of perspectives by different authors, the discussion herein will be limitedto such aspects and features as are salient in Strauss’s analysis.28

The beginning of the Pantheism Controversy is well known. In 1783,Jacobi informed Mendelssohn, by way of a mutual acquaintance, that, “inhis last days, Lessing had been a committed Spinozist.”29 For Mendelssohn,this disclosure amounted to nothing less than sheer slander. At that time,the German intelligentsia revered Lessing as a champion of the Enlighten-ment, while it denounced Spinozism as a heretical, atheistic, and anarchisticdoctrine. By the same token, Jacobi cast a shadow over Mendelssohn’s long-standing friendship with Lessing. With his declaration, Jacobi wanted tobuttress his contention that the Enlightenment and its rationalism as suchultimately led to atheism and fatalism. Lessing, he claimed, had reached the


same conclusion and had consistently embraced its radical consequences. Bymaking this publicly known, Jacobi intended to force on the Aufklärer thedilemma of either following in the footsteps of Lessing and accepting thedestructive effects of rationalism, or rejecting rationalism in favor of his owndoctrine of Glaube. As a result, Mendelssohn was compelled to defend notonly the memory of his friend, but also his own position as a protagonist ofthe moderate Enlightenment.

As Strauss argues, Jacobi’s attack struck home because he and Men-delssohn found themselves on common ground. Both faced the sameproblem: “the final crisis of modern metaphysics of Cartesian-Leibnizianstamp.”30 More particularly, they both grappled with “the knowledge thatthe attempt of modern metaphysics to found the concept of God particu-lar to faith by means of unbelieving speculation had failed.”31 The resultof this attempt, generally known as natural theology or natural religion,had become increasingly problematic as the radical premises of “unbeliev-ing speculation” had come to the surface and demanded a hearing. As wehave seen, Jacobi responded to this crisis by a wholesale repudiation ofmodern metaphysics and the attempt to return to traditional faith. ForMendelssohn, this solution was out of the question. Refusing to abandonthe moderate wing of the Enlightenment, he held on to the idea of a nat-ural religion and to the possibility of harmonizing religion and reason, notleast because it provided the cornerstone of his defense of Judaism as a re-ligion of reason.32

In the course of his introductions, Strauss critically discusses severalkey elements of Mendelssohn’s natural theology, showing how it becameincreasingly embattled by the atheism of radical Enlightenment on the onehand, and by the Jacobian return to faith on the other. For the present in-quiry, these are relevant only to the extent that they enable Strauss to sin-gle out general characteristics and general problems. In this perspective,the most important point in his treatment is his observation thatMendelssohn systematically privileges goodness as the primary attribute ofGod. This, Strauss holds, is a central characteristic of the Enlightenment:

The whole of Enlightenment, insofar as it implicitly or explicitly pre-serves a relationship with the tradition rooted in the Bible, is charac-terized by the fact that it combats the traditional doctrines andconvictions by having recourse to the goodness of God. More pre-cisely, proper to the Enlightenment is the unequivocal priority it ac-cords to God’s goodness over his power, his honour and hispunishing wrath; for the Enlightenment, God is not primarily the de-manding, summoning God, but rather the benevolent God.”33

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The priority of goodness over the other divine attributes determinesalmost all of the distinctive tenets of Mendelssohn’s natural theology,Strauss maintains. It provides the basis for his demonstration of the im-mortality of the soul, of human perfectibility and freedom; his concomitantrejection of eternal punishment; and his denial of revelation. A good andbenevolent God, Mendelssohn holds, does not need to make himselfknown by revelation, but enables man to acquire knowledge of his designby studying the perfect order of creation. Moreover, a benevolent Godcould not have created man but with a view to happiness, so that man mustbe infinitely perfectible. As a consequence, Mendelssohn rejects the cease-less suffering of eternal damnation, for it contradicts human perfectibilityas well as the perfection of creation. In addition, human perfectibility alsoimplies that every individual possesses both an irreducible existence andcertain inalienable rights that not even God can violate. This can neverlead to difficulties, Mendelssohn assures, for any conflict between therights of man and those of God is excluded.34

According to Strauss, however, giving priority to divine goodnessdoes not express “a theological concern of any kind, but instead the con-cern for the substantiality, the independence, the autonomy, and theproper right of the Ego (das Ich): the unconditional goodness of God isgiven priority because it is in accord with the claims of the autonomousEgo.”35 In other words, Mendelssohn’s natural theology proves to be ulti-mately guided by and accommodated to interests particular to modern phi-losophy.36 This is rendered manifest by several observations. Thus, forMendelssohn, one of the principal tasks of modern metaphysics consists insecuring human happiness and individual progress by liberating man fromthe fear of death and divine wrath. Not surprisingly, he once referred to hisnatural theology as to a “rather Epicurean” theism.37

This modern character also becomes apparent in Mendelssohn’s at-tempts to “correct” the doctrines concerning the immortality of the soul oftwo of his revered predecessors: Plato and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. AsStrauss shows, Phädon, Mendelssohn’s translation of Plato’s Phaedo, containsmany alterations and emendations with the effect of mitigating and moderat-ing the original teaching and its exigencies. In a typical manner, for example,Mendelssohn’s Socrates emphasizes the consoling effect of the idea of im-mortality of the soul, whereas Plato’s Socrates does not regard this as a validargument but instead considers it an obstacle to philosophizing. A similar ap-proach marks Mendelssohn’s Sache Gottes, oder die gerettete Vorsehung, ostensi-bly an elaboration of Leibniz’s Causa Dei. Whereas Leibniz argues for divineprovidence by asserting that God’s justice is his goodness guided and limited


by his wisdom, Mendelssohn reverses the order of wisdom and goodness. Asa result, he must reject eternal punishment and suffering, which Leibniz couldstill justify as a necessary component of the best of all possible worlds.

However, although it was intended as a defense of the orthodox reli-gious view of providence, Leibniz’s concept of divine justice implied a rad-ical break with the tradition, since it no longer allowed divine justice to bedistinguished from divine goodness and divine wisdom. In this way, Straussargues, Leibniz prepared the momentous transition from the old notion oflaw to the modern notion of right: “by dissolving the classical concept ofjustice which had preserved the original meaning of justice as obediencewith regard to the law, he had considerably precipitated the process thataimed at the eradication of law understood as obligation in favor of rightunderstood as claim.”38

Mendelssohn, a self-confessed follower of Leibniz, could not but ac-cept this result and adapt his natural theology in accordance with it. How-ever, his edifice started to topple when his faith in the power and theauthority of demonstration was decisively shaken in acrimonious disputeswith critics who attacked his natural theology: “Compelled to defend hisJudaism and his rationalism at the same time, he had to present Judaism asa purely rational religion. In any case, however, the teaching of the Bible isnot demonstrative . . . Saving Judaism was only possible for him in this way,that he severely restricted the right and the significance of demonstra-tion.”39 This restriction found its expression in Mendelssohn’s introduc-tion of the notion of “common sense” or “plain human understanding”(gesundes Menschenverstand), a specific human capacity to grasp intuitivelyand with full clarity certain essential truths that speculative reason alonecannot demonstrate. In Mendelssohn’s view, since common sense alonecould provide a basis for agreement among men, it had to guide and sup-plement reason, which he had come to regard as insufficient.

Not surprisingly, Strauss is critical of this move. First, he notes thatthis new configuration of reason and common sense is merely a reiterationof the traditional religious notion of revelation as a necessary guide for in-sufficient reason. Confronted with the failure of Cartesian-Leibnizianmetaphysics as a substitute for traditional faith, natural theology could dono more than seek refuge on “the neutral isle of common sense,” while therealm of speculation was invaded by the radical atheist metaphysics ofSpinozism.40 As Mendelssohn himself admitted, this move did not differessentially from Jacobi’s leap of faith out of speculation and demonstration.In both cases, the appeal to a faculty beyond speculation proved to be theonly way of saving theology and teleology.

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In addition, Strauss challenges Mendelssohn’s judgment—foreshadow-ing the current view—that Jacobi’s doctrine of Glaube threatens philosophicalspeculation and leads to irrational “enthusiasm” (Schwärmerey). On the con-trary, he argues, it is precisely common sense that endangers speculation: “Forcommon sense lets the animating conviction appear as self-evident, whereas[Jacobi’s] admission that this conviction is merely believed, implies or mayimply the knowledge of ignorance and therewith an impulse to speculation.”41

Differently stated, Jacobi’s teaching preserves unexplored latitude for philo-sophical speculation, which is altogether excluded by Mendelssohn’s notion ofcommon sense.

Third, Strauss argues that the notion of common sense merely com-pounds the predicament it seeks to escape from. Cartesian philosophy, heexplains, was motivated by the view that traditional philosophy had reliedtoo much on everyday language. As a result, it called for a distinct andpurely scientific language. This demand, however, could not be brought inagreement with the equally important requirement that the new philosophyenlighten humanity in general by supplanting the old popular beliefs, for:

especially in its “language,” this philosophy was further removedfrom the language of common sense than the earlier philosophy; ittended to extreme unpopularity. However, it thus became entirely in-capable of replacing the “popular system,” and therewith of fulfillingone of its most important functions, that of “Enlightenment.” Smallwonder, then, that “enthusiasm” reared its head anew. However,small wonder, as well, that common sense, which had allowed itself tobe enlightened to the best of its abilities by modern metaphysics,when it perceived that it could expect a new “obscurantism” from the“subtleties” of this metaphysics, dismissed its nurse without furtherado and declared itself mature.42

It did so, however, in the illusion that it could now freely marshalclear and distinct metaphysical truths, since it regarded the latter as havingbeen assimilated within everyday language. Hence, although it was intro-duced to remedy the shortcomings of Cartesian philosophy, the notion ofcommon sense remained within the horizon established by modern philos-ophy’s estrangement from everyday language. As a result, it did not lead toa serious reconsideration of “earlier philosophy” in relation to premodern,“nonenlightened” common sense. As Strauss points out, Mendelssohn wasconvinced that premodern metaphysics had been definitely surpassed bymodern metaphysics. He therefore persistently identified metaphysics withmodern metaphysics, and thus proved incapable of understanding premod-


ern thought as it understood itself. One example of this failure is his dis-torting appropriation of the Platonic teaching concerning immortality.43

According to Strauss, however, this general critique applies with equalforce to Jacobi. The latter, in spite of his sweeping repudiation of modernmetaphysics, also remains decisively bound to its presuppositions and ex-hibits a similar blindness to premodern thought. This becomes apparent ina central ambiguity of his critique of Spinoza. One of Jacobi’s main objec-tions against Spinozism is that it gives priority to action over thinking,whereby the latter is merely regarded as “the act in continuation” (die Hand-lung im Fortgang). However, he himself adopts precisely this very proposi-tion in his polemic against the Enlightenment when he asks, rhetoricallyand polemically, “Can philosophy ever be anything more than history?” andwhen he asserts that “every age has its own truth, just as it has its own livingphilosophy, which describes the predominant manner of acting of the age inquestion in its continuation (in ihrem Fortgange).”44 These assertions showthat Jacobi’s irrationalism and traditionalism, according to which trueknowledge can only result from virtuous action motivated by obedience totranscendent reality, are actually rooted in historicism. This accounts forthe decisionism characteristic of his leap of faith, as well as for his attempt tobring about a renewal of philosophy through a change in morality. Inessence, his doctrine is an early example of how, after the first wave of theEnlightenment, modern thought turns against itself by becoming historical.

In spite of his efforts, Jacobi remained equally captive to the horizonof modern—historical—thought, Strauss concludes: “Persisting in his critique of Spinoza to the end, he would not have been able to appeal tohistory against the Enlightenment, nor to faith (Glaube) understood withinthe horizon of the concept of history.”45 The implications of this terse re-mark deserve our attention. A sustained critique of Spinoza, it seems,would have called into question “the concept of history” and, perhaps,opened the possibility of a nonhistorical approach to both Enlightenmentand faith. It is hard to disregard the impression that, in this remark,Strauss is thinking of his own undertaking in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion.There, it may be recalled, Strauss locates the origin of historical con-sciousness in the concept of “prejudice” introduced by Descartes andadopted by Spinoza. As a “historical category,” this concept proved to be a powerful weapon that allowed Spinoza to deny the revealed charac-ter of the Bible and to disparage its contents as “prejudices of the ancientpeople.” Subsequent attempts by Mendelssohn and the moderate Enlight-enment to restore religion were based on this initial denial. An ade-quate critique of Spinoza, Strauss maintains, has to revisit the concept of

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prejudice and to reconsider the possibility of revelation, and thus to returnto the original conflict between philosophy and orthodoxy.

Neither Mendelssohn nor Jacobi was prepared to go this far. Insteadof leading to a revision of the foundations of modern philosophy, their re-sistance against radical Enlightenment only helped the latter to spread.With his announcement about Lessing, Jacobi aimed to discredit Spin-ozism and the Enlightenment. Instead, the Pantheism Controversy had theopposite effect: by being associated with the widely respected name ofLessing, Spinozism lost its ill repute and gradually came to be publicly ac-cepted, respected, and even revered. As we saw in the previous chapter, thiswidespread admiration was called into question by Hermann Cohen,whose critique eventually inspired the young Strauss’s research on Spinoza.

How can we assess the importance of Jacobi before and after Spinoza’sCritique of Religion from Strauss’s own perspective? As regards the time pre-ceding the book, at the beginning of this chapter we saw that Jacobi set offthe critique of Spinoza on the right foot, by questioning the legitimacy of“the basis of unbelieving science.” The way in which he did so in his worksas well as by dint of his role in the Pantheism Controversy probably exertedsome influence on the young Strauss’s general philosophical outlook, aswell as on his subsequent research on Spinoza. Concerning the time fol-lowing the book, Strauss’s investigations into the Pantheism Controversyclearly reveal that his appreciation of Jacobi became more critical in thelight of his encounter with Spinoza. More particularly, he finds that Jacobidid not go far enough in his critique of modern philosophy, because oncrucial points he remained too strongly attached to its premises. An ade-quate critique, Strauss suggests, must go beyond Jacobi. Although it is notentirely clear to what extent he thought Spinoza’s Critique of Religion ful-filled this requirement, his subsequent research on the Pantheism Contro-versy shows that in the meantime he had reached remarkable conclusionsregarding “the basis of unbelieving science.”

Atheism, Intellectual Probity, and the Love of Truth

In 1935, Strauss publishes Philosophy and Law (Philosophie und Gesetz), abook that will be discussed in further detail in the following chapter. In theintroduction, he summarizes the most important findings of his Spinozabook, including the connection between the modern Enlightenment andancient Epicureanism.46 However, Strauss is now conspicuously more crit-ical than before, especially as regards the differences between the two. Tobegin with, he focuses on his earlier conclusion that the modern critique of


religion no longer regards the attainment of happiness as a private andindividual matter, but as a public and political project. As we saw, the “po-litical hedonism” of the Enlightenment opened the perspective of a civi-lized world in which man creates the conditions for realizing happiness bysubjecting nature through the use of labor and science.

On this point, Strauss sharpens his former analysis, pointing out thatthe Enlightenment thus tries to achieve with practical—political, econom-ical, and technological—means what it cannot prove theoretically: thatthere is no place in the world for an inscrutable, omnipotent, and vengefulGod, that all phenomena are explicable without him, and that man is capa-ble of finding happiness without his assistance. The world anticipated bypolitical hedonism is presumed to be the concrete realization of the com-pleted metaphysical system of modern philosophy and thus the indirect,material refutation of revealed religion. In this respect, the effect of the En-lightenment’s strategy of ridicule is not only consolidated but also justifiedretroactively by the success of political hedonism. That the basic premise ofreligious orthodoxy has, in fact, survived unscathed, and that the closed sys-tem is thus anything but waterproof, is something to be made entirelyunimportant and insignificant by the sheer success of the enterprise. Forthis reason, Strauss calls the Enlightenment’s strategy “Napoleonic”:

Animated by the hope of being able to “overcome” orthodoxy throughthe perfection of a system, and hence hardly noticing the failure of itsactual attack on orthodoxy, the Enlightenment, striving for victorywith truly Napoleonic strategy, left the impregnable fortress of ortho-doxy in the rear, telling itself that the enemy would not and could notventure any sally. Renouncing the impossible direct refutation of or-thodoxy, it devoted itself to its own proper work, the civilization of theworld and man.”47

With the expression “in the rear,” Strauss stresses once again that the Enlightenment derives its main strength from a historical antithesis, usingmockery to consign orthodoxy to a primitive and underdeveloped past. Evenif it succeeded with flying colors, this does not do away with the fact that itcan maintain itself only within this antithesis. In a perspicacious review ofSpinoza’s Critique of Religion, Gerhard Krüger summarized this assessment bystating that the Enlightenment was founded in “an unfoundable negative ex-istential decision” against revealed religion.48 Precisely because this decisioncannot be founded theoretically, it forever bears the mark of the possibilityof revelation, and the Enlightenment is forced to armor it with the accom-plishments of modern science. However, Strauss asks—almost rhetorically—

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can an armor be anything more than an instrument of defense, and does ithave any raison d’être whatsoever without an enemy?

Is it not, ultimately, the very intention of defending oneself radicallyagainst miracles which is the basis of the concept of science that guidesmodern natural science? Was not the “unique” “world-construction”(Weltdeutung) of modern natural science, according to which miraclesare of course unknowable, devised expressly for the very purpose thatmiracles be unknowable, and thus that man be defended against thegrip of the omnipotent God?49

The modern scientific worldview and world-construction as a de-fense shield against the possible invasion of divine omnipotence: this, ac-cording to Strauss, is the ultimate expression of the neo-Epicurean will tohappiness, which first deployed its wide-ranging ambition in Spinoza’s cri-tique of religion. As his analysis points out, however, the thickness of theshield—like the intensity of the ridicule, perhaps—betrays the extent of thethreat that continues to emanate from the “impregnable fortress” of reli-gious orthodoxy. In other words, the positive spirit of modern science didnot so much disenchant the world as originate a new kind of magic withwhich it could counteract but not exorcise the old magic. Even if it hasproven to be extremely successful in doing so, however, it can only main-tain itself as long as the threat of the enemy continues to exist.

Strauss goes on to expand and augment his original analysis with asecond observation. In the Spinoza book, he observed that whereas origi-nal Epicureanism rejected belief in higher powers as illusory because of itsterrifying and disturbing effects, the Enlightenment’s political hedonismparticularly objects to the illusory character itself, regardless of whether itis terrifying or comforting. On this point as well, Strauss adds a new ele-ment, arguing that this shift in focus eventually turned against the Enlight-enment itself. In due course, the Enlightenment came to “enlighten” itself,exposing its own ideals of autonomy, individualism, culture, and civiliza-tion as illusions concealing the desolation of human existence. Followingits offensive against transcendence, modern philosophy came to undermineits own immanent foundations. An early portent of this evolution was al-ready mentioned in the previous section: the Pantheism Controversy, inwhich Jacobi—with his frontal attack against rationalism and his doctrineof belief—and Mendelssohn—with his “rather Epicurean theism” and hisdoctrine of common sense—confronted the Enlightenment with its ownlimits. Though an effort by thinkers like Kant was required to reestablishthese limits, their precariousness had definitively been brought to light.


The Pantheism Controversy, however, was only the beginning. Sincethe nineteenth century, Strauss now argues, the process of self-undermininghas continued and challenged all the putative accomplishments of the En-lightenment. At the end of this trajectory, facing a religious orthodoxy stillintact, is an atheism that rejects all comforting illusions—including those ofthe Enlightenment—and confronts the desolation undaunted. This “newkind of fortitude” is based on what Strauss calls “intellectual probity” (in-tellektuelle Redlichkeit), which, as he further explains, is “the ultimate andpurest ground (Rechtsgrund) for the rebellion against the tradition of revela-tion.”50 Although Strauss fails to append names explicitly, it is not difficultfor the attentive reader to surmise that he is referring to thinkers such asFriedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Martin Heidegger.51 The latter deep-ened and expanded the Enlightenment’s self-critique into a wholesale dis-mantlement of Western culture, including its Judeo-Christian and Greekroots. Their ruthless examination placed man in a world of will to power, dis-enchantment, and “thrownness” (Geworfenheit).

For Strauss, however, the obstinacy of this “atheism from probity”raises serious questions. Reverting once more to his study of Spinoza, headds a third element: what distinguishes the late modern atheism from itsclassical, Epicurean predecessor is the conscientiousness and the moral se-riousness with which it rejects orthodox biblical faith in God. Such char-acteristics, Strauss argues, suggest that it never succeeded in completelydetaching itself from this faith. The uprightness and the zeal with whichmodern atheism rejects the illusion for the sake of the illusion prove to bedescendants of biblical morality. Although it opposes revealed religionmore than ever before, its dependency on the latter is apparent more thanever before. Strauss elucidates this contention in a long and dense passageworth quoting at length:

Thus it becomes clear that this atheism, compared not only with theoriginal Epicureanism but also with the generally “radical” atheism ofthe age of Enlightenment, is a descendant of the tradition groundedin the Bible: it accepts the thesis, the negation of the Enlightenment,on the basis of a way of thinking which became possible only throughthe Bible. Although it refuses, since it is unwilling to disguise its un-belief in any way, to represent itself as a “synthesis” of the Enlighten-ment and orthodoxy, yet it itself is the latest, most radical, mostunassailable harmonization of these opposed positions. This atheism,the heir and judge of the belief in revelation, of the centuries-old,millennia-old struggle between belief and unbelief, and finally of theshort-lived but by no means therefore inconsequential romantic

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longing for the lost belief, confronting orthodoxy in complex sophis-tication formed out of gratitude, rebellion, longing and indifference,and also in simple probity, is according to its own claim as capable ofan original understanding of the human roots of the belief in God asno earlier, no less complex-simple philosophy ever was. The lastword and the ultimate justification of the Enlightenment is the athe-ism stemming from probity, which overcomes orthodoxy radically byunderstanding it radically, free of both the polemical bitterness of theEnlightenment and the equivocal reverence of romanticism.”52

The significance of this observation for the development of Strauss’sthought can hardly be overestimated. Strauss himself, at least, judged it suf-ficiently important to reproduce it in its entirety thirty-five years later, inthe autobiographical preface to the English edition of Spinoza’s Critique ofReligion.53 In this preface, moreover, he supplies a number of valuable clari-fications. Thus, he explicitly connects the “atheism from probity” with thenames of Nietzsche and Heidegger.54 The former, Strauss affirms, was ini-tially an important source of inspiration: Nietzsche was the first to suggestthat both the Enlightenment and its self-destruction are the result of thepersistent urge to veracity and righteousness characteristic of biblical moral-ity. In Strauss’s judgment, however, this same urge animated Nietzsche’sown attempt to liberate himself from biblical morality, which explains whyhe ultimately remained entangled in it.55 Moreover, Heidegger’s positionevinces a similar problem, Strauss argues: trying to purify philosophy fromevery theological residue, the vocabulary of his own new thinking is inter-spersed with notions and concepts that are beholden to the Bible, such as“anxiety” (Angst) and “thrownness” (Geworfenheit). As a result Strauss con-cludes, “The efforts of the new thinking to escape from the evidence of thebiblical understanding, i.e., from biblical morality, have failed. And, as wehave learned from Nietzsche, biblical morality demands the biblical God.”56

Thus, the autobiographical preface reveals in all clarity what still remainsimplicit in Philosophy and Law.57

For Strauss, this conclusion is the occasion for a farewell to the athe-ism from probity, and thus to his own youthful commitment to modernphilosophy. Having reiterated the passage from Philosophy and Law aboutthe “last word” of the atheism from probity in the autobiographical pref-ace, he now adds, significantly, “Yet this claim, however eloquently raised,cannot deceive one about the fact that its basis is an act of will, of belief,and that being based on belief is fatal to any philosophy.”58 In its ultimateform, modern philosophy reveals its foundation in an act of belief, andthereby it disqualifies itself as unbelieving science or philosophy.


Looking back at the trajectory covered in the previous chapters, it be-comes clear that the passage in Philosophy and Law reflects a crucial momentin Strauss’s thinking. When he calls the atheism from probity “the ultimateand purest ground (Rechtsgrund) for the rebellion against the tradition ofrevelation,” he appears to have found an answer to the question that sparkedhis analysis of the Theological-Political Treatise: the quaestio iuris, the questionregarding the legitimacy of Spinoza’s attack, but also the question regardingthe “basis of unbelieving science” that he gratefully traced to Jacobi. Bothquestions, he now finds, point to the atheism from probity that proves to berooted in an act of belief inherited from biblical faith. As a result, he seemsto face a dilemma. On the one hand, an untenable atheism from probityproves to be “the ultimate and purest ground” for the entry of Judaism intohistory by means of assimilation and political Zionism. On the other hand,the only obstacle for a return to orthodoxy disappears, for the same probityalso proves to be “the ultimate and purest ground” of unbelieving science.What initially appeared to be the only alternative to orthodox biblical faithnow turns out to be another form of belief indebted to biblical faith. In Phi-losophy and Law, Strauss formulates the dilemma as follows:

The situation thus formed, the present situation, appears to be insol-uble for the Jew who cannot be orthodox and who must considerpurely political Zionism, the only “solution to the Jewish problem”possible on the basis of atheism, as a resolution that is indeed highlyhonorable but not, in the long run, adequate.”59

Undoubtedly, Strauss is referring to himself. In a letter of 1932 toGerhard Krüger, he leaves no doubt that, even in the wake of his study ofSpinoza, the way back to faith remained closed to him: “Our difference isrooted in this, that I cannot believe, and that therefore I search for a possi-bility to live without faith.”60 At the same time, his study of Spinoza didcompel him to take leave of political Zionism, which was based on the ques-tionable atheism of modern philosophy. The situation, thus, indeed appearsto be insoluble for a Jew incapable of living in faith—either that of Jewishorthodoxy or that of atheism from probity—but compelled to justify his lifeand his unbelief in the shadow of the impregnable fortress of orthodoxy.

However, we should not fail to notice and appreciate Strauss’s subtlety.Indeed, he writes that the present situation “appears to be insoluble,” thus im-plying that the situation is not necessarily hopeless. In Philosophy and Law,Strauss confirms this impression with two further considerations, the fullbearing of which will be clarified later on. Immediately after formulating thedilemma, he suggests that the present situation “not only appears insoluble

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but actually is so, as long as one clings to the modern premises”: as long, thatis, as one clings to the view that Enlightenment necessarily means modernEnlightenment, or that unbelieving science is necessarily modern unbelievingscience.61 In the next section, we will see that according to Strauss this viewis problematic, to say the least. The second consideration is equally enig-matic, buried as it is in an inconspicuous footnote added to Strauss’s obser-vation on the atheism from probity, and which asserts that probity “issomething very different from the old love of truth (alte Wahrheitsliebe).”62

Taken together, both considerations suggest that in the meantime Strausshas discovered—or, rather, rediscovered—a possible alternative to the hope-less dilemma of orthodoxy and modern atheism. At the beginning of this re-discovery is the question whether the old has indeed been surpassed andeliminated by the new.

The Socratic Question and the Fate of Philosophy

A recurrent observation in Strauss’s commentary on the Pantheism Con-troversy is that the attempts of Mendelssohn and Jacobi to find a way out ofthe crisis of modern metaphysics run aground on their conviction that it hasdefinitively superseded premodern philosophy. For Strauss, however, thisconviction becomes increasingly doubtful. Can modern philosophy legiti-mately claim to have made irreversible progress on its predecessor? As wesaw in the previous chapter, like “prejudice” and “freedom,” “progress” is anexpression of the historical self-consciousness of the modern spirit. Al-though the relationship between modern and premodern philosophy is notthe main focus of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss does raise the subject.Thus, having defined the concept of prejudice as a historical category, headds significantly, “This precisely constitutes the difference between thestruggle of the Enlightenment against prejudices and the struggle againstappearance and opinion with which philosophy began its secular journey.”63

Modern philosophy, Strauss goes on to explain, construed this differ-ence in a variety of ways. First, it regarded its struggle against prejudice asa renewal of the old “struggle against appearance and opinion” or, as theimplicit reference to the Greek root of both terms shows, as a return to an-cient philosophy’s battle against doxa. At the same time, it understood thisreturn as an essential advance and an improvement on its predecessor. Un-like doxa, it claimed, the concept of prejudice had a universal scope and va-lidity, since it was based on radical methodical doubt. As a result of thisradicalization, it came to regard the difference as a general opposition,whereby prejudice came to include not only revealed religion but also pre-


modern philosophy. In chapter 2, the Cartesian critique of the scholasticuse of Aristotelianism was already mentioned in passing: for Descartes, thetraditional philosophical approach was an obstacle that prevented reasonfrom focusing on what is immediately given. Strauss’s research on the Pan-theism Controversy provides additional elucidation on this point: whiletraditional philosophy focused on and was guided by ordinary language, inwhich opinion or doxa found its expression, Descartes rejected this orienta-tion as an impediment to the general liberation from prejudice and the at-tainment of purely demonstrative knowledge. Philosophy’s turn towardwhat is immediately given was therefore accompanied by the radical dis-missal of the old orientation toward ordinary language and the construc-tion of a scientific language destined to end what it perceived to be thereigning confusion.

When the Cartesian project entered a crisis, the validity of the cri-tique of religion became doubtful, as Jacobi’s attack and Mendelssohn’s de-fense illustrated. The validity of the critique of premodern philosophy,however, was not called into question, even though it too had becomeproblematic. Both Jacobi and Mendelssohn nevertheless remained attachedto it: while the former did not succeed in abandoning Spinozism, the latterremained loyal to the modern project of a natural theology. Because oftheir belief in progress, neither was capable of approaching premodernphilosophy without modern preconceptions.

Jacobi’s and Mendelssohn’s omission becomes a self-assigned taskfor Strauss following his farewell to political Zionism and modern atheismfrom probity: to critically revisit the Enlightenment’s campaign againstthe prejudices of premodern philosophy, the so-called quarrel between theancients and the moderns (la querelle des anciens et des modernes). This in-quiry starts in the present, since the deeply rooted conviction of Jacobiand Mendelssohn does not differ essentially from the contemporary view.At the beginning of the 1930s, concurrent with his research on the Pan-theism Controversy, Strauss writes a number of reviews and lectures inwhich he reappraises the quarrel in order to understand what he calls the“situation of the present” (die Lage der Gegenwart).64 If the departure fromhis youthful commitment has compelled him to find new bearings, it hasby no means put an end to his investigations. In these writings, Straussfinds that the campaign against prejudice has culminated in the wholesaledestruction of all traditions. This is mainly the accomplishment of Nietz-sche, who brought the antitraditional offensive of the Enlightenment aswell as its self-criticism to completion. In a note to one of the lectures,Strauss explains:

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The end of this struggle is the wholesale rejection of the tradition: notonly of its answers, also not only of its questions, but of its possibili-ties: the pillars on which our tradition was based: prophets andSocrates-Plato, have been demolished since Nietzsche . . . Nietzschethe last Enlightenment thinker.”65

With his probing and incisive critique, Nietzsche completely disman-tled the two basic principles of European culture. Against the contemplativeideal of classical philosophy and the moral ideal of the Judeo-Christian tra-dition, he advocated the will to power, which replaces the contemplation ofreality by its production and which operates beyond good and evil. In Nietz-sche’s celebration of the will to power, modern philosophy achieved the ul-timate negation of tradition, claiming to have attained total freedom.66

When, however, one asks in what this freedom consists, the Enlightenmentproves to be unable to go beyond the negation of tradition. Its own answers,but also its own questions, have no other foundation than the negation ofthe traditional answers and questions, and hence it is incapable of askingtruly original questions. In Strauss’s own words, the freedom it attains is“the freedom to answer, but not the freedom to question; only the freedomto a No instead of the traditional Yes.”67 The Enlightenment remains en-tangled in a negative dependency on the tradition, as Strauss will later ob-serve in the introduction to Philosophy and Law.

This incapacity to develop original questions comes to the surfacewhen we observe how late modern philosophy tackles the issue of how todeal with the ultimate freedom, Strauss argues. The contemporary philo-sophical landscape is characterized by confusion and pandemonium. Dif-ferent systems coexist alongside and against each other, each as convincedof its own truth and value as of the historical relativity of all truths and val-ues.68 Some, like Max Weber, are resigned to this “polytheism” by accept-ing and affirming plurality and relativity as the inexorable fate of allphilosophy.69 They contend, moreover, that it is impossible ever to gain afree outlook on the reigning turmoil, since every appraisal is based on oneinterpretation among many. Others regard the present situation as a phasewithin a process of decline and decay. Still others, finally, try to find a wayout by looking for a new synthesis.70

Regardless of their differences and similarities, however, what unitesall these positions is a conviction that the past can provide no solution tocontemporary problems. An answer to the question as to how to cope withthe ultimate freedom can be found only in the present. For despite the con-fusion, they continue to view the present as a progress in comparison with


the past. Thus, the relativists are persuaded that relativism signifies an im-provement on the old and obsolete view that the truth exists. And even themost pessimistic thinkers of decadence still expect that, following dusk, theowl of Minerva will yet take wing.71 However, Strauss asks, isn’t this viewbased on a number of unchallenged presuppositions? Those who resignthemselves to the prevailing disorder are guilty of making an unwarrantedinference. That human thought is dependent on its situation does not ex-clude the possibility that it is able to oversee the situation adequately: “Fromthe insight in the dependency of thought on the situation (die Situations-Bedingtheit des Denkens), it does not follow that one cannot catch sight of thesituation in an original way, free of the prevailing opinions.”72 From the ob-servation that so far man has failed to discover the truth, it does not followthat he has to acquiesce in this failure as in some fatality. Whoever does ac-quiesce, commits the fundamental mistake of trying “to determine the taskfrom the fate” or to elevate the fate of philosophical inquiry into the princi-ple of philosophical inquiry.73

What modern philosophy presents as an incontrovertible progress infact hides a painful stagnation, Straus argues. The eradication of all preju-dices has not led to knowledge, but to a radical ignorance: “Our freedomis the freedom of radical ignorance.”74 The absence of all prejudices is anempty freedom, a freedom unaccompanied by an instruction manual, andwhich will not tolerate any instruction manual. Instead of knowledge, con-temporary thought rests on the unwarranted belief that it knows some-thing, even many things. This belief is the main obstacle that keepsphilosophy from seeking a way out of its ignorance: “Fundamentally igno-rant, we cannot attain knowledge, because we know too much. Because we believetoo much that we know.”75 When we abandon this belief and admit our ig-norance, modern philosophy with all its learning is incapable of telling uswhat to do with our hard-won freedom.76 Yet we cannot avoid any less thanprevious periods to raise the question what we must do, what the right orthe good way is. In our attempts to do so, however, we face the same prob-lem: “compelled to question like any previous age, the present is more in-competent to question than any age. We must question, without being ableto question.”77 For not only our answers but our questions as well are basedon the negation of traditional questions and answers.

How do we escape from this deadlock? Perhaps our ignorance never-theless points to a way out, Strauss suggests. When we admit our igno-rance, the question of what to do with our present freedom turns out not tobe all that different from an old, traditional, even classical question: howshould we live, or pôs biôteon? For, as Strauss indicates, its origin is Greek

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or, to be even more exact, Socratic: for Socrates, the question regarding thegood or the right life was nothing less than the focal point of his thinking,and even of his life.78 In defense of both, he asserts in the Apology: “the un-examined life is not worth living.”79 The importance of this discovery forStrauss’s investigations can hardly be overestimated, as it profoundlychanges his understanding of the theological-political problem. Underly-ing and preceding the two questions that occupied him as a political Zion-ist concerned with the claims of religion—the question of “politics” and thequestion of “God”—an older, more original, and more fundamental ques-tion has become visible—how should I live?—as well as the model of a lifeentirely dedicated to this question. By the same token, we understand theenigmatic and almost concealed remark he makes in Philosophy and Law: the“old love of truth” he distinguishes from the “intellectual probity” ofNietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger is nothing other than the philosophiceros that is at the heart of the “Socratic program.”80

Of course, Strauss adds, Socrates was well aware that the quest for ananswer to this question more often meets with failure than with success. Infact, the experience of failure is so recurrent and so powerful that his mostfamous student immortalized it in a well-known image. For what is Plato’sfamous simile of the cave, if not an evocation of the enormous difficultiesthat naturally beset the philosophic quest for the good and the true?81 Be-fore the cave dweller can even attempt to leave the cave and contemplatethe sun, he must overcome a great number of obstacles. As Plato’s imageshows, every stage in the liberation and ascent is accompanied by much ef-fort and pain, and an overwhelming likelihood of failure. And even if thecave dweller succeeds in reaching the exit of the cave, scorn and ridiculeawait him upon his return to the cave from those who have remained in-side. If the intrinsic difficulties are of such magnitude, Strauss asks, needone wonder that the cave dwellers hold so many divergent and contradic-tory opinions concerning the good and the right way of life?

But even if the way out of the cave is strewn with obstacles, and evenif so many different opinions exist, this does not justify the conclusion thatit is impossible to leave the cave.82 On the contrary, Strauss holds, thesedifficulties compel us to try again and try harder. That is why we as mod-erns should not acquiesce in the reigning pandemonium when we raise thequestion regarding the right way of life: “Mindful of the Platonic simile, wewill not allow ourselves to be led astray by the anarchy of opinions, butrather strive as much as possible to get out of the cave.”83 Differentlystated, instead of elevating the fate of philosophy into its guiding princi-


ple, we should philosophize like Socrates and Plato. Viewed from this per-spective, Strauss argues, at least one prevailing view loses its self-evidentcharacter, namely, the view that the question regarding the right way of lifecan and should be directed exclusively to the present. Before the rise ofmodernity, the present had little or no importance for the way in whichphilosophy raised the question of how to live. It was only concerned withwhat goes beyond the temporal, or with those aspects of the temporal thathad proven their durability.84 That the present became the center of philo-sophical attention is in many respects a historical novelty. Perhaps the mostimportant philosophic characteristic of the present situation is that it in-cessantly and exclusively asks after itself: “This situation is characterized bythe question regarding it (die Frage nach ihr).”85 As we saw previously, how-ever, this self-referentiality only leads to the confrontation with our radicalignorance regarding the right way of life.

Why does modern philosophy raise the question of the good lifewith exclusive regard for the present? This, according to Strauss, is due tothe deep-seated conviction that the present constitutes an indisputableprogress in comparison with the past or, in other words, to modern his-torical consciousness.86 The latter tells us that every view of the good life is historically determined and that therefore the right way of life doesnot exist, while presenting this particular insight itself as a decisive prog-ress compared to the unhistorical way of thinking of the past. As a result,our question automatically focuses on the presently reigning ideal, whilesimultaneously the meaning and the seriousness of this ideal are histori-cized and relativized. This brings us to the cause of the present deadlock:the historical consciousness compels modern thought to focus the ques-tion of the good life on the present and thus makes the question impossi-ble. The only way out of this stalemate, therefore, is to call into questionthe historical consciousness:

[P]recisely the historical consciousness is the factor that makes thequestion regarding the right life come to grief. For if man is essentiallyhistorical, the right life does not exist; but every age, every historicalsituation has its own “right life,” its own ideal of life (Lebensideal) . . .Under the assumption of the historical consciousness, the question re-garding the right way of life forces the question regarding the intel-lectual situation of the present. Because this question cannot beanswered, the question regarding the right way of life appears to be nolonger answerable. Should it be answerable, then this is only possiblewhile the historical consciousness is called into question.”87

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A philosophical critique of the historical consciousness, however, is ahazardous undertaking, because it impinges on a number of deep-rootedmodern convictions. To begin with, Strauss asserts, it has to point out thatthe historical consciousness, when carried to its ultimate consequences,must be applicable to itself. The view that all human thought is historicallyconditioned must be admitted to be itself historically conditioned and thusdestined to be superseded—as it was preceded—by another, possibly non-historical view. This possible change may not be forthwith rejected as a re-gression or a relapse into a barbaric condition, for this would presupposethat the historical consciousness is an exception to its own rule, whichwould amount to a reaffirmation of its questionable premise. If the critiqueof the historical consciousness is taken seriously, one must admit one’s rad-ical ignorance and abandon this premise. Similarly, one must take into ac-count the possibility that the present is a time of decay, without the uniqueopportunities attributed to it by the thinkers of decadence.88

A second and more important task of the critique consists in callinginto question the universal claims of the key concept of prejudice. As wesaw earlier on, this claim is closely connected with the genesis of the con-cept as a return to, an improvement on, and a rejection of the classicalphilosophical notion of doxa. Hence, it is necessary to inquire into thecauses of this transformation. To this end, Strauss appeals to an author wealready encountered in the second chapter. In the Guide for the Perplexed,Maimonides refers to the Greek philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias,who distinguished three “causes of disagreement about things” in philoso-phy, analogous to the obstacles to philosophizing in Plato’s simile of thecave. According to Maimonides, the Greek failed to mention a fourth causebecause it was unknown to him:

In our time there is a fourth reason which Alexander did not mentionbecause it did not exist among them, viz. habit and training . . . So itgoes with the opinions in which a man has grown up: he loves themand holds them fast and keeps himself away from diverging opinions.Thus for this reason, too, man is prevented from knowing the truth.This is the situation of the multitude with regard to the corporealityof God . . . because of their habituation to the texts in which theyhave a firm belief, to which they are habituated, and whose literalmeaning appears to indicate the corporeality of God.”89

As Strauss explains, the difference between the Middle Ages—“ourtime”—and Antiquity does not consist in the fact that the Greeks knew notexts expounding the corporality of God; on the contrary, many examples


are to be found, and Maimonides was certainly aware of them. Rather, thedecisive difference lies therein that these texts did not pose an obstacle tophilosophy, because they were not authoritative and thus did not constitutea fertile breeding ground for customs and education. By contrast, the“texts” Maimonides refers to are of an entirely different nature: the Bible isregarded as divine revelation by a religious orthodoxy, and as such it is adocument with an absolute and unconditional authority, the ultimate anddefinitive answer to all human questions, not least the question regardingthe right way of life. The tradition based on this authority has brought intothe world customs and opinions that have become incomparably more en-trenched, and that form an additional and more formidable obstacle to phi-losophy. This fourth obstacle, Strauss emphasizes, is not natural buthistorical: it is not intrinsic to the situation of philosophy, but it has been in-troduced “from the outside” by the tradition of revelation. In his account,Strauss explains this new situation with a striking elaboration on the Pla-tonic simile of the cave:

The fact that a tradition based on revelation entered the world of phi-losophy has added the historical difficulty to the natural difficulties ofphilosophizing . . . The natural difficulties of philosophizing receivedtheir classical depiction in the Platonic simile of the cave. The his-torical difficulty can be illustrated when one says: at present there isanother cave below the Platonic cave.”90

Thus, the problem philosophy faces since the entry of revealed religionis the following: whoever wants to philosophize is henceforth compelled firstto find his way out of the second cave in order to return to the first cave withits natural obstacles. In other words, he must return to the “world of philos-ophy” as it was before the entry of revealed religion.91 This, Strauss argues,is precisely what the Enlightenment originally attempted to do:

To a certain extent, Maimonides’s observation [concerning thefourth obstacle to philosophizing] outlines, maps out the battle of theentire last three centuries, the battle of the Enlightenment: in orderto make possible philosophizing in its natural difficulties, the artificialcomplication of philosophizing must be removed (aus der Weltgeschafft); the struggle has to be against prejudices.92

As the words “to a certain extent” (gewissermassen) indicate, however, ac-cording to Strauss there is an important difference between the “outline” andits eventual realization. In fact, the Enlightenment’s fight against prejudice

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has failed to bring us back from the second to the first cave. First, as Straussdiscovered in his study of Spinoza, the fourth obstacle was relegated to themargins of modernity, where it nevertheless remained essentially intact. Sec-ond, Strauss finds, the Enlightenment quickly lost sight of its original goal. Asa result of the claim to universal validity that accompanied it, the concept ofprejudice was soon applied to premodern philosophy as well. In terms ofStrauss’s emendation of the Platonic simile, it may be said that not only theprospect of leaving the first cave, but perhaps even the notion of the first caveitself was consigned to the realm of prejudice.93

In the light of Maimonides’s remark, however, this claim to univer-sal validity turns out to be unfounded, and thus also the dismissal of pre-modern philosophy based on it. In its original sense, Strauss points out, theconcept refers exclusively to the prejudices of revealed religion.94 Since itwas introduced to combat the new obstacle to philosophizing, it had to beattuned to the obstacle’s characteristics: as opposed to the classic notion ofdoxa, it had to be a historical category. Moreover, while overcoming the nat-ural obstacles was essentially an individual effort, eliminating the historicalobstacle required a long-term collective effort, the ramifications of whichwere discussed in the previous chapter. In order to generate the dynamicnecessary for this effort to succeed, a strong historical consciousness wasindispensable. Because of its spectacular success in challenging all tradi-tions, including the Enlightenment itself, this historical consciousness hasacquired a seemingly universal authority in our times. This success, how-ever, obscures but does not obliterate the fact that it originated in a veryparticular opposition, insofar as it continues to rely on the persuasive forceof the historical category of prejudice.

In this way, we can see how Strauss’s critique of the historical con-sciousness ties in with his critical analysis of modern atheism from probity.Instead of making a return to the first cave possible, modern philosophyhas become entangled in its battle against the historical obstacle of revealedreligion. Hence, its questions and answers can exist only as negations anddenials of the traditional questions and answers. By the same token, it hasfailed to regain the original freedom to question, the freedom of the firstcave. On the contrary, Strauss claims, in the course of three centuries, it hasentrenched itself ever deeper in the second cave. In addition, it has all butclosed off the exit with a proper “tradition” that discredits both the attemptto return to the first cave and the effort to leave it as a meaningless enter-prise, a flight from the stark reality of the human condition. Hence, it is no accident that the late modern atheism from probity goes hand in handwith an intensification of the historical consciousness: in the perspective


of Nietzsche and Heidegger, not only thought but man and eventuallyBeing itself become time.95

The result of this process is the present quandary, Strauss concludes.The religious and philosophical traditions have been almost completely dis-solved, and underneath the contemporary pandemonium is our radical ig-norance. Unlike the natural ignorance of the first cave, our modernignorance continually makes us collide with the walls of the second cave. Ittells us that our question regarding the right way of life can be answeredonly by the present, while that same present dismisses our question as point-less. Nevertheless, Strauss does not judge the situation to be entirely hope-less. In his view, the present situation has one major advantage: as a result ofthe total alienation with regard to all traditions, the latter are no longer ob-vious or self-evident in any sense. This was not the case at the beginning ofthe Enlightenment: the latter turned against traditions it regarded as obvi-ously outdated and indefensible. As a result, it did not feel compelled to se-riously question their source, not even in moments of crisis, as the exampleof Mendelssohn shows. Strauss even goes so far as to suggest that this blind-ness was constitutive of the Enlightenment’s struggle:

However, what is “obvious” (selbstverständlich) is always fundamen-tally not understood (unverstanden). This not-being-understood (Un-verstandenheit) is the ultimate reason why the battle against thetradition has become possible and necessary. The final outcome: thefactual ignorance of the origins.96

Now that modern thought has undermined itself and the traditionshave vanished as an object of conflict and contention, it becomes possibleagain to approach their foundations in a nontraditional and nonpolemicalway.97 This is the positive side of the philosophical iconoclasm of thinkerslike Nietzsche and Heidegger. When Strauss introduces the image of thesecond cave in the 1930s, Heidegger is gathering renown with his projectof Destruktion, the attempt to rethink more than two thousand years of phi-losophy, resulting in groundbreaking interpretations of Greek philoso-phers. In his autobiographical writings, Strauss acknowledges the profoundinfluence of Heidegger’s undertaking on the development of his ownthinking.98 Nonetheless, he also insists on important differences. In Hei-degger’s as in Nietzsche’s thought, the dismantlement of the philosophicaltradition ultimately aims at the final overcoming (Überwindung) of the tra-dition. Both thinkers lay bare the roots of Western metaphysics with theintention to eradicate them and replace them with a wholly new way of

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thinking. Underlying this intention, we already learned in the previous section, is the atheism from probity, the rebellious heir to biblical morality,which refuses to accept any illusion masking the groundlessness of humanexistence. In their conscientious determination, however, both Heideggerand Nietzsche neglect to consider an important possibility: “to see theroots of tradition as they are and thus perhaps to know, what so manymerely believe, that those roots are the only natural and healthy roots.”99

Before bidding a final farewell to the tradition of philosophy, Straussargues, we have to inquire whether its foundations are indeed as deficient andfaulty as Nietzsche and Heidegger claim. More particularly, we have to askwhether the Socratic question regarding the right way of life is indeed an ab-surd, unanswerable question. In the present condition, however, we cannotraise the Socratic question directly and without further ado, Strauss warns.After all, our present ignorance is anything but Socratic: our inquiries re-garding the right way of life are conditioned by the historical consciousness.The latter’s spell, however, cannot be broken at one fell swoop—it must bedemolished gradually, bit by bit. The privileged means to do so is a certainform of historical research, to wit the renewed study of the founding docu-ments of the philosophical tradition. This study is the appropriate responseto the specific difficulties of the present age. In our radical ignorance, thequestion regarding the right way of life compels us to reconsider whether thepremodern traditions really have nothing to say to us, as the historical con-sciousness would have us believe.100

In order to raise this latter question, we have to detach ourselves inthe very first place from what Strauss calls the modern prejudice par excel-lence: “namely, the prejudice that the truth has not already been found inthe past.”101 Of course, Strauss does not mean to say that we should there-fore rashly and uncritically embrace the contrary prejudice that the truthhas indeed already been found in the past. All we should do is learn toreckon with the possibility that it may have been found.102 Only with thisdisposition will we be sufficiently motivated to take ancient thinkers seri-ously and try to understand them without preconceptions. This does notmean a blanket submission to their authority, but merely a readiness to be“taught” by the old philosophers, to be guided by them in studying theirworks.103 In this way, the historical research is put at the service of whatStrauss calls “learning through reading” (lesendes Lernen). The latter, hecautions, is not yet philosophizing; at most, it is a preparation to it: “weneed history first of all in order to ascend to the cave from which Socratescan lead us to the light; we need a propaedeutic, which the Greeks did notneed, namely, learning through reading.”104


The propaedeutic of learning through reading is thus peculiar to thesecond cave. It is a prosthesis that helps us rehabilitate our natural con-sciousness, but which nevertheless remains an artificial, unnatural medium,characteristic of the reigning incapacity to raise the question regarding theright way of life in an original, natural way.105 To confuse its use with ac-tual philosophizing would be a grave error, Strauss emphasizes: historicalresearch is only an inevitable detour, a means and not an end in itself.106

Our interest in the past can no longer be merely antiquarian, since this pasthas lost its self-evidence. Precisely for this reason, however, our interestcan be put at the service of the return to the first cave and the retrieval ofthe Socratic question.107 According to Strauss, we owe this possibility tothe same thinker who radicalized the consequences of the Enlightenmentto the extreme. In a telling passage, he spells out the ramifications:

In any case, Nietzsche has enabled us to understand again the Socraticquestion, to recognize it again as our question. The Platonic dialoguesare for us no longer self-evident (selbstverständlich)—no longer obvi-ously all right, no longer obviously wrong, outdated, irrelevant, but weread them in this way, that we would conduct them ourselves, if wewere able to. However, we are unable to do so, because all the conceptswe have on our part (von uns aus) stem from the modern tradition.108

This passage reveals that, for Strauss, “learning through reading” is adouble task: it consists in studying both premodern and modern philosophy.Habituated for a long time to viewing and judging the former through thelens of the latter, in order to remove the lens we must get to know its con-struction by studying the concepts of the modern tradition. Since the validityof these concepts is based on the conviction that modern philosophy has de-cisively defeated premodern thought, it is necessary to reopen la querelle desanciens et des modernes, the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns.109

The passage just cited also shows how this task hinges on the othertask Strauss sets himself: in order to recover the Socratic question as ourown question, we must first learn to understand the Platonic dialoguesagain. The latter have lost their self-evidence, since both the traditionalreading and the modern critique of that reading have become problem-atic. As we try to remove the modern lens, we are compelled to start read-ing all over again, without prejudice and prepared to learn. In his laterwork, Strauss formulates this task as follows: we must cease to try to un-derstand the old thinkers better than they understood themselves, con-vinced as we are that we dispose of much more advanced equipment thanthey did. Before passing such judgment, we must first try to understand

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them as they understood themselves. These two related undertakings moreor less delineate the entire program Strauss begins to carry out from the sec-ond half of the 1930s. In the following four decades, his primary occupationas a scholar will be to study major philosophical, theological, and literarytexts, prompted by the attempt to recover the Socratic question, breakingthe spell of the historical consciousness by reopening the quarrel betweenthe ancients and the moderns. The results of this program will be discussedmore extensively in the following chapter. By way of transition, two ques-tions must be addressed that have remained largely unanswered in thischapter. To begin with, how is a return to the first cave, to the world of phi-losophy before the entry of revealed religion, possible if the additional ob-stacle has a foundation that cannot be refuted theoretically, as Straussargued in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion? And second, how does Strauss’s neworientation affect his understanding of the theological-political problem?Although these questions may seem to point into completely different di-rections, both reappear in the next stage of his investigation, when he takeshis first steps back toward the first cave. Not entirely by accident, he initiallyfocuses on the author who inspired him to introduce the image of the sec-ond cave: Maimonides.


109

CHAPTER 4

The Order of Human Things

. . . what do we, adherents of the true religion,have to do with the son of Sophroniscus?

—Moses Mendelssohn, Letter to H. Wessely (1768)

Medieval Enlightenment: Nomos and Platonic Politics

In Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss presented Maimonides as a classicAristotelian, the Jewish equivalent of Thomas Aquinas. When, two yearslater, he takes his leave of modern philosophy and turns to the recovery ofthe Socratic question, his view of Maimonides has altered dramatically. Onceagain, the occasion is a controversial statement by Hermann Cohen. In an ar-ticle written in 1908, Cohen praised Maimonides as “a classic of rationalism,”and defended the striking thesis that the medieval thinker was “in deeperharmony with Plato than with Aristotle.”1 Like Cohen’s contentious ap-praisal of Spinoza, this divergent opinion galvanizes Strauss’s research.Moreover, as in his study of Spinoza, Strauss develops his own perspectivein a critical discussion with Cohen, on which he reports in a lecture writtenin 1931 and tellingly entitled “Cohen and Maimonides.”2

In his article, Cohen commemorates Maimonides as the greatest repre-sentative of what he calls “the medieval Jewish Enlightenment.” By introduc-ing Greek philosophy, he argues, Maimonides enabled the Jewish tradition toenlighten itself by purging its mythical elements and developing its rationalelements.3 Among the instruments he developed to this end was the allegori-cal exegesis of the Bible already discussed in chapter 2. Precisely because ofthese accomplishments, however, Maimonides cannot have been an Aris-totelian, Cohen contends. To begin with, there is a fundamental theological

difference: “All honor to the God of Aristotle, but truly he is not the God ofIsrael.”4 The biblical God is a personal, inscrutable, and provident God: who-ever wishes to know him must obey him and comply with his commandmentsand prohibitions. The God of Aristotle, on the other hand, is an impersonaland intelligible God: whoever wishes to know him must engage in contem-plation. As a son of Israel, Maimonides was compelled to give precedence toobedience over contemplation. As a result, he could not follow the meta-physics of his Greek example on this crucial point.5

Second, Cohen asserts, the central characteristic of both medieval andmodern Enlightenment is the practical—moral and political—concern forthe improvement of the human condition. Insofar as Maimonides was both adevout Jew and an Enlightenment thinker, ethics and politics must be re-garded as the center of gravity of his thinking, and not metaphysics and logic,as is generally assumed.6 For Aristotle, however, the practical sciences—ethics, politics, and economics—are subordinated to the theoretical sciences,such as logic and metaphysics. In this respect as well, then, Maimonides can-not have been an Aristotelian, Cohen infers. On the contrary, the two argu-ments mentioned above can only lead to the conclusion that Maimonideswas a Platonist. What distinguishes Plato from Aristotle is precisely the factthat the former gives priority to the ethical and political over the theoretical.Among other things, this is borne out by the fact that in the famous Platonicdoctrine of the Ideas, the Idea of the Good transcends the Idea of Being,which for Aristotle is the highest object of contemplation.

The point on which Maimonides is “in deeper harmony with Platothan with Aristotle,” Cohen explains, is the priority he accords to morality(Sittlichkeit). If one wants to understand Maimonides as a proponent of me-dieval Enlightenment within Judaism, one must view his Enlightenmentagainst a Platonic rather than an Aristotelian background. As Strauss puts it:“When Cohen is concerned with enlightened Judaism, he means thereby: aJudaism understood within Plato’s horizon. And when he discovers Maimonidesas an enlightened Jew, this means: he discovers Maimonides as a Jew who un-derstands his Judaism within Plato’s horizon.”7 In his critique, Strauss aimsto show that while Cohen’s conclusion is basically correct, the argument thatleads up to it is not.8 Thus, contrary to Cohen’s assertion, there is no oppo-sition between Maimonides and Aristotle as regards the primacy of theoria:for both thinkers the contemplative life is the highest human goal. As a re-sult, Cohen’s attempt to detach him from Aristotle on this issue is unjusti-fied.9 Moreover, Strauss points out, there is no opposition between Aristotleand Plato as to the primacy of contemplation either. The difference betweenthem is that while Aristotle views contemplation as an entirely free activity,


for Plato contemplation is under an obligation to justify itself to society. Thisrequirement is expressed in the Republic: the philosopher, who after much toiland effort has succeeded in leaving the cave, is subsequently compelled to re-turn to it, in order to care for his fellow citizens.10

This, however, leaves intact Cohen’s more fundamental objectionthat the Aristotelian God is not the God of Israel. Strauss admits that thisfact cannot remain without consequences for the interpretation of Mai-monides: how, to begin with, can it be reconciled with his Aristotelianism?In response to Cohen, Strauss develops an interpretation of his own, whichconfirms Cohen’s basic intuition with regard to Maimonides’s Platonism,albeit in an unexpected and remarkable way. This interpretation consti-tutes the basis of Philosophy and Law, to which reference was already madein the previous chapter.11 Although this book will only appear four yearslater in 1935, in fact nearly all of the main insights of this book are alreadydeveloped in the lecture on “Cohen and Maimonides.” For this reason, ourdiscussion will include both texts.

As we saw, Cohen’s argument founders on the fact that there is nodifference of opinion between Maimonides and Aristotle as regards the pri-ority of theory over ethics and politics. Strauss’s own point of departure isthat there is indeed a disagreement between the two, albeit on an entirelydifferent and, as we will see, more fundamental point. In his lecture, Straussrevisits an observation he had already made in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion:although Maimonides follows Aristotle in viewing theory as the highesthuman goal, he departs from Aristotle in asserting that the highest humanperfection cannot be attained by the philosopher, but only by the prophet.Hence, Strauss points out, the fundamental point of divergence with Aris-totle must be sought in Maimonides’s teaching on prophecy or prophetol-ogy, which was already mentioned in the second chapter.12

According to this teaching, the prophet receives divine revelation in adirect encounter with God and subsequently mediates it to the communityof the faithful. Although revelation itself has a supernatural character, Mai-monides asserts that the prophet is able to receive and communicate it onlydue to certain natural human capabilities that are developed to perfection tosuch an extent as to surpass the perfection of the philosopher.13 To beginwith, the prophet possesses perfect knowledge and understanding: not onlydoes he have direct knowledge of those natural truths the philosopher canonly discover through reasoning, he also has direct access to supernaturaland superhuman truths that remain inaccessible to the philosopher. Second,the prophet has a perfect imaginative faculty, which is at the service of hisperfect cognitive faculties. Due to the unique cooperation between both, the

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prophet is able to use corporeal images to transmit divine revelation to amultitude incapable of understanding its purely intelligible content withoutassistance.14 According to Maimonides, this combination of a perfect imag-inative faculty and the skill to educate and guide the multitude by means ofimages is characteristic of statesmen, lawgivers, soothsayers, magicians, andseers. For Maimonides, prophecy is thus an exceptional cooperation of phi-losophy, politics, lawgiving, soothsaying, and magic; in short, a combinationof theoretical and practical perfection that exceeds the perfection of boththe philosopher and the statesman.15

Hence, the prophet is not only a perfect philosopher but also a perfectlawgiver who enacts a perfect law and thus founds a perfect society.16 In theGuide of the Perplexed, Maimonides substantiates this claim in Aristotelianfashion. Man, he argues, is a political being who by nature needs to live incommunity. The natural heterogeneity among human beings, however,continually threatens the community with disintegration. For this reason,human society requires political rule capable of forging unity and harmony.Political rule can be effectuated in two distinct ways: either by governmentor kingship, or by law. Since a government or a king generally rules by ap-plying the law, the latter is the original and higher form of political rule.

Maimonides further distinguishes two types of legislation by looking attheir respective goals. The first type of legislation constitutes a society that issolely aimed at securing the well-being and perfection of the human body.Such a law, he explains, can only be of human origin. The second type con-stitutes a society that aims at both the perfection of the body and the perfec-tion of the soul, which is the specifically human perfection. Only a divine lawpromulgated by a prophet can attain this higher goal, since he alone has thetheoretical and practical capacities required to receive and transmit it. Sincethe prophet surpasses the philosopher on this point, the latter is obliged toobey the divine law: as a political being, he is subject to the authority of theprophet. Even if he were to equal the prophet on the theoretical level, he stillwould lack the practical perfection required for legislation.17

According to Strauss, Maimonides is neither the only one nor thefirst to propose this view. On closer inspection, his prophetology emulatesa model introduced and developed by medieval Islamic philosophers suchas Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroës. These falasifa, as they were called inArabic, attempted to reconcile Greek philosophy and Islam by presentingthe prophet Mohammed as a philosopher, seer, statesman, lawgiver, andfounder of the perfect state.18 Maimonides, who was familiar with the workof Alfarabi and who similarly attempted to harmonize philosophy and Ju-daism, adapted this approach by presenting Moses as the perfect legislator.


As Strauss goes on to show, however, the prophetology of the falasifa itselfpoints to an even older source. In the introduction to a treatise entitled Onthe Parts of the Sciences, Avicenna states that the science dealing withprophecy is a part of the practical sciences, more specifically of political sci-ence.19 The goal of prophecy, he explains, is primarily political, since theprophet’s principal task is to provide political guidance to the community.In the same treatise, he points to the source of this particular view:

Of this, what has to do with kingship is contained in the book [sic] ofPlato and of Aristotle on the state, and what has to do with prophecyand the religious law is contained in both of their books on the laws . . .this part of practical philosophy [viz. politics] has as its subject matterthe existence of prophecy and the dependence of the human race, for itsexistence, stability, and propagation, on the religious law.20

When Avicenna refers the treatment of prophecy to political science,he invokes the authority of Plato and Aristotle. In this approach, he is no ex-ception. As Strauss shows, all of the falasifa as well as Maimonides under-stand revelation and the revealed law in the light of classical politicalphilosophy or, more exactly, of Platonic political philosophy.21 For they didnot have access to Aristotle’s Politics, nor was any Aristotelian work on thelaws extant.22 On the other hand, they did possess Plato’s principal politi-cal works, the Republic and the Laws, at the core of which is the ideal stateor, to be more exact, the best regime (aristè politeia) led by a philosopheracting as lawgiver and statesman. Hence, the falasifa and Maimonides re-garded revelation as the realization of Plato’s model: they identified theprophet with the philosopher-king-legislator and the revealed law with thedivine law that constitutes the best regime.23

Moreover, Plato’s work provides justification for the subordinate posi-tion of philosophy under the revealed law, which proved to be an importantpoint of divergence between Maimonides and Aristotle. In the Republic,Socrates forbids the philosophers “what is now permitted,” namely, to remainoutside the cave and devote themselves to contemplation in splendid isolation,“and not be willing to go down again among those prisoners or share theirlabors and honors, whether they be slighter or more serious.”24 Hence,Socrates proposes legislation that compels the philosophers to be concernedfor and participate in the life of the political community. Only when they obeythese laws and dedicate themselves to the common good can a truly harmo-nious state come into being, as opposed to the existing states that are gov-erned “in a dream.”25 According to Strauss, Plato’s Socrates thus subjects


philosophy to “the state by means of the harsh commandment of the lawgiver,which considers the order of the whole and not the happiness of the parts.The philosopher is subordinate to the state, subordinate to the law. Philosophymust justify itself before the state, before the law: it is not simply sovereign.”26

Nevertheless, Socrates formulates a specific requirement the law hasto meet. It can claim the philosopher’s obedience only if it is truly divine,that is, if its ultimate goal is the perfection of the soul, which is tantamountto philosophizing. Thus, in the Laws, the Athenian Stranger names pru-dence and intelligence as the most important among “the divine goods” or-dained by the divine law.27 According to the falasifa, the revealed law fulfillsthis requirement more than any other law. On the one hand, it surpassesthe understanding of the philosopher and thus legitimately commands hisobedience.28 On the other hand, it aims above all at the perfection of thesoul: both the Torah and the Koran command man to acquire knowledge,the highest form of which is knowledge of God and creation. For thefalasifa, this means that the law not only allows but also obliges them tophilosophize, since this is the way toward knowledge of God.29

Thus, it is no coincidence that the prophetology of Maimonides andthe falasifa appeals to Plato, Strauss argues. Living, in fact, under the au-thority of a religious law, they had no other choice: “The Platonism ofthese philosophers is given with their situation, with their standing in factunder the law.”30 Platonic political philosophy provides them with themeans to justify their philosophic activity, something the Aristotelianframework fails to do: as we saw, Aristotle frees contemplation from polit-ical or legal tutelage. Thus, Strauss suggests, even if the Politics had beenaccessible to the falasifa, the work would not have lent itself for medievalprophetology, since it does not furnish analogies that would allow aprophetically revealed law to be explained philosophically.31 Platonic polit-ical philosophy is therefore nothing less than the conditio sine qua non of me-dieval Islamic and Jewish Aristotelianism, he asserts. The falasifa can“Aristotelianize” because they are authorized to do so by a revealed law un-derstood in Platonic terms.

In this way, Cohen’s intuition about Maimonides is confirmed, albeiton different grounds. While Maimonides is indeed “in deeper harmonywith Plato than with Aristotle,” this is not because both are committed to“morality,” Strauss argues. The actual reason is that as a Jew, Maimonidescould justify his Aristotelianism over against the absolute authority of theTorah only by using Plato’s political philosophy. The latter enabled him to“enlighten” the Jewish tradition by understanding Mosaic revelation as apolitically constitutive moment in which philosophy and the social order


were perfectly attuned to each other.32 For this reason, Cohen’s secondthesis is also in need of correction. The fundamental difference betweenthe God of Aristotle and the God of Israel is indeed undeniable, Straussconcedes, but it cannot be properly understood in terms of an oppositionbetween theory and morality. Rather, the difference must be investigatedstarting from what the Jewish tradition and the Greek philosophical tradi-tion have in common, namely, the concept of a divine law, understood as acomprehensive moral, legal, and political order:

Cohen’s outset—“all honor to the God of Aristotle, but truly he isnot the God of Israel”—leads no further if one interprets the God ofIsrael as the God of morality (Sittlichkeit). Instead of morality, oneshould say: law. It is the concept of law, of nomos, which unites Jewsand Greeks: the concept of the concrete binding order of life.33

As Strauss explains, the original concept of nomos has been obscuredand suppressed by two later traditions that continue to dominate modernthought. First, there is the Christian tradition, based to a large extent onPaul’s critique of the Jewish law. Paul rejected the detailed and comprehen-sive system of rules regulating human life the Torah imposes on the faithful.The true law, he argued, is a law “written in the heart,” the core of which isthe commandment to love one’s neighbor.34 Second, there is the natural lawtradition, founded among others by Spinoza and Hobbes. In their work, theconcept of law as a comprehensive binding and obligating order has beenreplaced by the concept of law as a system of abstract norms, based on in-alienable rights. Both of these traditions, moreover, are interrelated, sincePaul’s critique played an important role in preparing the modern concept ofnatural law.35 Since Cohen’s notion of Sittlichkeit is one of the products ofthis confluence, it is part of the obscuring veil that has been thrown over theancient concept of nomos.36

Whoever wishes to unearth the common background of Maimonidesand Plato, of Judaism and Greek philosophy, is therefore compelled to fol-low two trajectories, Strauss holds. To begin with, the Platonism of medievalJewish and Islamic philosophy must be examined further in its own terms,without reverting to ulterior—either Christian or modern—concepts. Therediscovery of this Platonism casts an entirely new light on the thought ofMaimonides and the falasifa, the interpretation of which up to now was de-termined by the reception of their work by medieval Christian Aristotelian-ism.37 Maimonides and the falasifa, Strauss claims, “are ‘more primitive’ thanthe modern philosophers, because unlike the latter they are not guided by


the derivative idea of natural law, but by the original, ancient idea of law as auniform, total order of human life; in other words, because they are pupilsof Plato and not pupils of Christians.”38

Furthermore, the spell of the Christian and the natural law traditionsmust be broken by means of a thorough examination of the basic conceptswith which they shrouded the ancient concept of law.39 Among otherthings, this requires that the oppositions characteristic of modern thoughtand politics be transcended:

We will not be able to understand Plato and thus also Maimonidescompletely before we have gained a horizon beyond the antagonismProgress—Conservatism, Left—Right, Enlightenment—Roman-ticism or however one wishes to characterize this antagonism; not be-fore we understand again the concept of the eternal good, the eternalorder, free from all consideration of progress or decline.40

In the light of this intention, it does not come as a total surprise thatStrauss’s first step on this second trajectory will be to commence an in-depthstudy of Hobbes, one of the founders of modern natural law doctrine and ofmodern political thought. This study will be discussed further on. At thispoint, we must continue to follow the first trajectory. For Strauss, the dis-covery of the falasifa’s Platonism by way of Avicenna’s utterance constitutesnothing less than a turning point. By focusing on the divine law as a commonground, it opens a wholly new perspective on the relationship between phi-losophy and revealed religion. In this way, it launches a new chapter inStrauss’s struggle with “the theme” of his thought: the Platonism of thefalasifa shows that they view the relationship between philosophy and revela-tion within a theological-political framework.41 The transcendent, divine orderthey appeal to is a political order, in this sense that it concerns human livingtogether rather than the life of the individual. To appreciate the importanceof this discovery, and to show that it remained central for Strauss, it sufficesto refer to a letter he wrote in 1951 to his colleague Eric Voegelin, in whichhe writes: “With regard to Philosophy and Law, I believe that I basically stillstand on the same ground. . . . I still believe today that the theioi nomoi is thecommon ground of the Bible and philosophy—humanly speaking.”42

The presence of a common ground does not, however, entail the absence of differences or even disagreement. Even if the God of Aristotle isnot the God of Israel, this does not yet mean that Plato and Israel—letalone Islam—worship one and the same God. When the falasifa rely on theanalogies supplied by Platonic political philosophy, they do so in order to


justify their activity as philosophers before the authority of the divine law.For why would one philosophize if all the essential questions of human lifehave been answered by God’s revealed law? Strauss asks. “For at first therevealed law makes philosophizing questionable from the ground up. AGod-given and therefore perfect law necessarily suffices to guide life to itstrue goal. What then is the sense of philosophizing?”43

Unlike classical philosophy, its medieval counterpart faces a new sit-uation, which was concisely summed up in Maimonides’s reference to thefourth historical obstacle. Although the falasifa revert to Platonic politicalphilosophy in order to find an adequate response to this situation, their re-sponse differs from the Platonic model in certain decisive respects, not leastby its reliance on the figure of the prophet, whose theoretical and practicalcapacities exceed those of the philosopher. Thus, in the falasifa’s view, therevealed law not only fulfills all of the requirements set by Plato, it evenseems to surpass these requirements. If this is the case, Strauss asks, to whatextent is it still legitimate to regard them as “pupils of Plato”? Differentlystated, doesn’t medieval Enlightenment make the fourth obstacle into itsvery foundation, instead of trying to overcome it?

In Philosophy and Law, Strauss seems to conclude that this is indeed thecase. From the perspective of their own perfect revealed law, the falasifa canonly regard the Platonic concept of the divine law as a propaedeutic, a defi-cient prefiguration: “if they were not to lose confidence in the revelation be-cause of Plato, then it had to be the case that Platonic philosophy had sufferedfrom an aporia in principle that had been remedied only by the revelation.”44

For the falasifa, the political thought of the pagan Plato is necessarily limitedand incomplete: it can only propose as a desideratum that which revelationhas perfectly fulfilled. In this sense, Strauss points out, medieval prophetologycontains a critique of the Platonic point of view: “From the factual answeringof the Platonic inquiry into the true state there follows a modification of thePlatonic blueprint (Entwurf), that is, a critique of the Platonic answer.”45

As Strauss further indicates, however, this critique can be reversed.What may seem to be a decisive improvement on Plato’s thought is actu-ally a degradation: “Since, therefore, for them [the falasifa] the law was nottruly open to question (fraglich, fragwürdig), their philosophy of law does nothave the sharpness, originality, depth and—ambiguity of Platonic politics.Since Plato’s requirement is now satisfied, Plato’s questioning inquiry aboutthis requirement is blunted (nivelliert).”46 According to Strauss, while thefalasifa critically appropriate the Platonic answer, they harbor fundamentalreservations regarding the question that underlies it, the question regardingthe best regime. This is the fundamental point of difference between the


two, and in this sense, they indeed seem to make the fourth obstacle to phi-losophizing into the foundation of their thought.

While this conclusion clarifies Strauss’s interpretation of the falasifa,it raises questions regarding his view of Plato. For what does he mean by“the sharpness, originality, depth and—ambiguity of Platonic politics,”which apparently are lacking in the work of the falasifa? And why does hesingle out the final characteristic, ambiguity, by separating it with a dash?To say the least, these characteristics suggest that for Plato the law is moredoubtful and problematic than it is for the falasifa. But how should we con-strue this suggestion? Nowhere in Philosophy and Law does Strauss explainhis rather cryptic remark about Plato. Discussing the Platonic approach ofthe falasifa to the revealed law, he writes that “the philosophic foundationof the law . . . is the place in the system of the Islamic Aristotelians and theirJewish pupils where the presupposition of their philosophizing comesunder discussion.”47 In this sense, the philosophic foundation of the law in-cludes the philosophic foundation of philosophy itself. We have alreadyseen why for the falasifa this self-foundation of philosophy occurs in thefield of politics: their situation confronted them with the acute politicalproblem of having to justify their activity before the authority of the law.As Strauss goes on to claim, however, the self-foundation of philosophy isa political problem for Plato as well: “the political problem, in which is con-cealed nothing less than the foundation of philosophy.”48

Why this enigmatic addition? And how does this relate to the specificcharacter of Platonic political philosophy, its ambiguity? To answer thesequestions, some bibliographic exploration is required. The fourth and finalchapter of Philosophy and Law, devoted to the philosophical foundation ofthe law, is, in fact, the revised version of an article published separately ina Swedish journal.49 In revising the original article for inclusion in thebook, Strauss removed an instructive passage at the end:

Platonic philosophy is the execution of the “Socratic program”. . .The Socratic question regarding the right way of life asks after theright way of living together, after the true state; the Socratic questionis political. Since Plato has always philosophized in the sense of the“Socratic program,” one may say: philosophizing platonically meansto ask after the good, after the idea of the good.50

In this way, Strauss establishes an intriguing connection betweenPlato’s philosophy and the Socratic question regarding the right way of life,which was already discussed in the previous chapter. Not only does he


identify Platonic philosophy as a whole with the “Socratic program,” thequestion regarding the right way of life, but he also goes on to specify thatthis question is a political question. Why he omitted this instructive and ina sense crucial passage in Philosophy and Law is not clear; all we can do is tryto assess its significance.

Once again, the explanation points to Hermann Cohen. The latter, welearned from “Cohen and Maimonides,” put Strauss on the track of the“deeper harmony” between Maimonides and Plato. In the same lecture,Strauss indicates that Cohen adds another important element to this bold as-sertion. What distinguishes Plato from Aristotle, Cohen argues, is the for-mer’s “Socratic capacity”: in giving priority to morality and politics overtheory, Plato recognizes with Socrates that the primary and fundamentalquestion of philosophy is the question regarding the right way of life. More-over, Cohen adds, the right way of life is “a problem, which has to rejuvenateitself time and again, which occurs in ever new questions, which in every newsolution only raises new questions.”51 In other words, the Socratic questionremains an open question. Finally, Cohen argues, the question regarding theright way of life is meaningful only when it is systematically related to humansociety, when it is understood as a political question. “There is no self-consciousness that could be obtained without taking into account the stateand without guidance by the concept of the state.”52

Thus, Cohen proves to be a source of inspiration not only for Strauss’srapprochement of Plato and Socrates, but also for his interpretation of theSocratic question as a political question. In addition, Cohen supplies a thirdimportant insight: the Socratic question is necessarily an open question. In“Cohen and Maimonides,” Strauss explicates and develops the connectionbetween these three insights in a strikingly radical way. His point of depar-ture is Plato’s Apology, where Socrates defends his way of life against the ac-cusations of his fellow Athenians. In this context, Socrates famously tells hisaudience that all he knows is that he knows nothing, an utterance tradition-ally understood by some as ironical or even as dishonest by others. This,however, is not necessary, Strauss rejoins, provided one heeds an importantnuance. Granted, every reader of Plato’s dialogues is aware that Socratesknows many things: he has an exceptional understanding of the charactersof his fellow citizens, as well as of the affairs of the polis. His insistence onhis ignorance is based on the recognition that he knows nothing about themost important and most pressing human issue, the right way of life. Thisrecognition is precisely what impels him to raise the question regarding theright way of life. Measured by this fundamental ignorance, the many thingshe does know appear paltry and without significance.


When Socrates’s utterance is understood in this radical way, it fol-lows that there is no such thing as a Socratic teaching or doctrine. This isnot because he did not leave any writings, as tradition has it, but becausehe was unable to develop any doctrine on the basis of his queries. AllSocrates is able to do is ask questions in the awareness of his ignorance,and call himself and others to account for their life and their opinionsabout the good and the just. Since the answers he obtains always prove tobe deficient, inconsistent, or contradictory, they compel him to continuehis inquiries.

Because the evidence of the question always exceeds that of the answers, Socrates persists in his questioning, Strauss writes: “he wants toremain in the question, namely because questioning is what it comes downto, because a life that is not questioning is not a life worthy of man (men-schenwürdig).”53 According to Strauss, Socrates’s assertion in the Apologynevertheless contains an—albeit paradoxical—answer to the question re-garding the right way of life. As long as no answer stands firm, question-ing itself is the only right and justifiable way of life: “Thus, Socrates doesgive an answer to the question regarding the right way of life: asking afterthe right way of life—this alone is the right way of life.”54 Of course, this doesnot do away with the fact that even this paradoxical answer is an answerthat Socrates must critically challenge, insofar as he wishes “to remain inthe question.” Thus, it is essential to philosophy that it ceaselessly ques-tions its own presuppositions. In the Apology, Socrates points to this self-questioning in his well-known story about the Delphic oracle’s curtnegative response to the question whether any man was wiser than he. ForSocrates, this answer was the occasion to refute the oracle by searching forsomeone wiser than he.55

This, however, is not the only characteristic of Socrates that is gen-erally overlooked. As Strauss stresses with Cohen, for Socrates human lifeis essentially living together: the life of the individual is essentially ori-ented toward the community, toward the polis, and it cannot be dissoci-ated from the latter without losing its meaning. This means that both thequestioning life and its object must at all times be considered in relationto the political community. On the one hand, Socrates always raises hisquestion regarding the right way of life in a dialogue with others. Indoing so, his primary goal is not to teach nor to convince, for he has noteaching, but only to reach agreement and accord regarding the good andthe just. Such agreement, after all, is indispensable if the community isto be truly a community. This shows, according to Strauss, that the ques-tion regarding the right way of life is always and inevitably a question


regarding the right way of living together, regarding the best regime. Because of this double orientation on the polis, Strauss summarizes, theSocratic question is in essence political:

Thus, the knowledge sought by Socrates is agreement, resulting fromdiscussion, on the good, which as a human good is a common good.Socratic questioning regarding the right way of life is an asking-together(Zusammenfragen) after the right way of living together (Zusammenleben)for the sake of the right way of living together, for the sake of the truestate. The questioning of Socrates is essentially political.56

As Strauss goes on to point out, the term “political,” as it is used inthis context, is ambiguous. It refers both to actual “day-to-day” politics andto that which is of the utmost importance to the community, that which ismost controversial among its members, the good and the just. While thiscontroversy is what impels Socrates to seek the good and the just in con-versation with others, it is also that which makes his own activity politicalin the practical sense. This ambiguity is inevitable, Strauss affirms, insofaras human life itself is essentially political.57 In general, this characteristiconly becomes explicit when man turns expressly toward the community, asin the case of the politician. The latter, however, is concerned with the af-fairs of the polis in the opinion that he knows what the right way of livingtogether is, and propagates this opinion in order to convince the public.When one turns toward the community as Socrates does, guided by thequestion regarding the right way of living together, the political action israther implicit. Socrates only knows that he does not know the right way oflife, let alone the right way of living together. Unlike the politician, there-fore, he is unable to proclaim a specific opinion, either orally or in writing.Nor is he able to address a multitude of citizens, since the latter can only beswayed by means of a doctrine, and this would mean the end of question-ing. With his questions, Socrates can only address individual human beingsin oral conversation:

Because Socrates knows that he knows nothing, that all understanding(Verständnis) can only be agreement (Einverständnis), he does not address the multitude but only individuals; his conversation withothers is a dialogue. That is why he speaks and does not write. Forwhat is written is necessarily misunderstood; it cannot protect itselfagainst misunderstanding; it always says one and the same thingonly—whereas it is necessary to always say the one true thing (das EineWahre) ever differently.58


Hence, Strauss asserts, Socrates’s political action is paradoxical, bothliterally and figuratively. His persistent query regarding the right way oflife leads beyond the doxai, the multifarious and conflicting opinions re-garding the good and the just. As a result, his insights cannot straightfor-wardly be expressed in the nonparadoxical language of opinion. But theconcrete political implications of his query are equally paradoxical: sus-tained asking-together, philosophizing in dialogue constitutes a form ofliving together that oddly enough seems to meet the demands put forwardby the Socratic question as a political question. For, as Strauss argues, onthis level as well, the question paradoxically points to an answer. If, in theabsence of a conclusive answer to the question regarding the right way oflife, questioning itself proves to be the right way of life, then under thesame conditions asking-together after the right way of living together itselfproves to be the right way of living together.59 Still, we should not forgetthat even this paradoxical answer is subject to philosophical questioning.

Taking leave of “Cohen and Maimonides,” we return to the two ques-tions raised concerning Philosophy and Law: why is the self-foundation of phi-losophy a political problem for Plato as well, and in what does the ambiguouscharacter of Platonic politics consist? On closer inspection, both questionsprove to be intimately related. In order to clarify this relationship, however,we must first address another question that imposes itself when we comparethe passage omitted from Philosophy and Law with the account of the Socraticquestion in “Cohen and Maimonides.” Platonic philosophy, according toStrauss, is the execution of the Socratic program, the question regarding thetrue state, the best regime. In this respect, there is no difference between mas-ter and pupil. However, if Plato always philosophized “in the sense of the ‘So-cratic program,’” how are we to cope with the seemingly very un-Socratic factthat he wrote dialogues that strongly appear to convey some kind of teaching?Don’t the Platonic dialogues provide exemplary proof of the observation thatwhat is written is necessarily misunderstood? In this case, is it at all possible tomaintain that Plato, like his teacher, “wants to remain in the question”?

The only way in which the rapprochement of Plato and Socrates canbe upheld would seem to be by suggesting that the dialogues do not conveya teaching either, but only serve to bring to light the Socratic ignorance.This, however, would presuppose that Plato somehow solved the problemof the written word, and that his written dialogues somehow preserve thepeculiar qualities of Socrates’s spoken dialogue. Looking at the researchStrauss conducts after Philosophy and Law, this hypothesis cannot be dis-missed. In fact, he finds it confirmed by none other than the medieval Is-lamic philosophers, the falasifa, and his Jewish pupil Maimonides.


Between the Lines: The Art of Writing

Speech was given to man to hide his thoughts.

—Gabriel Malagrida60

The falasifa justified their philosophic activity by presenting it as a legalcommandment. As Strauss shows, however, this commandment was ac-companied by specific conditions. In Philosophy and Law, he discusses theseconditions by referring to Averroës’s Decisive Treatise Determining the Na-ture of the Connection between Religion and Philosophy (Kitâb Fasl-al-Maqâl), aclassic example of the falasifa’s viewpoint. In this treatise, Averroës raisesthe question whether philosophy is prohibited, permitted, or commandedby the revealed law.61 Appealing to various verses of the Koran, he arguesthat the law enjoins the investigation of the beings in relation to theirMaker, and thus commands the practice of philosophy after the manner ofthe Greeks. Philosophy distinguishes itself from other human activitiescommanded by the law by the fact that its goal coincides with the highestpurpose of the law, which is to attain happiness in the knowledge of God.As a result, Averroës concludes, philosophy can never contradict the law.Both ways lead to the truth, and the truth cannot contradict the truth.

If the law differs from philosophy on certain issues, the philosopheris obliged to interpret the law figuratively or allegorically. This procedureis justified, Averroës affirms, since the law originally has two meanings.The prophet, who had direct access to the intelligible divine truth, couldreveal it in human language only by means of similes and enigmatic ex-pressions.62 For the multitude of nonphilosophers, this outer meaning suf-fices to guide them toward the right way of life.63 The philosopher,however, is capable of grasping the inner, intelligible meaning of the re-vealed law, even though his understanding never equals that of the prophet.For this reason, the philosopher is not merely allowed but in fact obliged tointerpret the literal sense of the revealed law figuratively or allegorically.64

At the same time, it is forbidden for the philosopher to communicatethis figurative interpretation to the multitude, since it would easily cause mis-understanding and confusion.65 For this reason, he must use a way of com-municating that Strauss calls “esoteric”: by means of a complex, reticent, andlapidary style, he must make his views and insights inaccessible to unqualifiedand unauthorized eyes and ears. In fact, the medieval Islamic and Jewishphilosophers indicate that they themselves employ this technique in their ownwritings. Thus, in the introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonidesannounces that he will not treat the parts of metaphysics systematically, but


“scattered, and . . . interspersed with other topics.” The reason for this proce-dure, he explains is the following:

No intelligent man will require and expect that on introducing anysubject I shall completely exhaust it; or that on commencing the expo-sition of a figure I shall fully explain all its parts. Such a course couldnot be followed by a teacher in a viva voce exposition, much less by anauthor in writing a book, without becoming a target for every foolishconceited person to discharge the arrows of folly at him.66

An “intelligent man,” Maimonides implies, is aware that certain philo-sophical subjects cannot be discussed openly in public, either in a conversa-tion or in written form, without arousing suspicion and unrest. At the sametime, when these subjects are addressed in a book in an incomplete and al-lusive way, scattered and mixed with other topics, an intelligent man is ableto supply what is missing and to reconstruct the argument independently. Inany case, the formal qualities of the book in question are such that an “ig-norant” reader would fail to notice the omissions and to reconstruct theinner coherence of the work. Moreover, Maimonides’s remark indicatesthat esoteric communication serves the mutual protection of philosophersand nonphilosophers: while the former are saved from public suspicion andpersecution, the latter are protected against confusion and discord.

In addition, the falasifa indicate that they are not the only thinkers,nor the first to make use of esoteric communication. In the same treatise inwhich he refers the treatment of prophecy to Platonic political philosophy,Avicenna writes, “Thus in their writings the most renowned philosophers ofthe Greeks, and their prophets, employed images and figures in which theyconcealed their secrets, e.g., Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.”67 Similarly, inthe Guide of the Perplexed, Avicenna’s Jewish follower Maimonides pointsout, “This principle was not peculiar to our Sages: ancient philosophers andscholars of other nations were likewise wont to treat of the principia rerumobscurely, and to use figurative language in discussing such subjects.”68 Sub-sequently, the only ancient philosopher mentioned by name is Plato.

Esoteric communication, Avicenna and Maimonides assert, is alegacy of the classical Greek philosophers. According to the latter, notevery human being is capable of leading a life of questioning and contem-plation: there is an ineradicable qualitative difference between the smallgroup of philosophers and the multitude of nonphilosophers. What is in-telligible to the former creates confusion and distrust among the latter. Forthis reason, the philosophers are compelled to hide their views from themultitude by means of a variety of literary devices such as the images and


figures mentioned by Avicenna, but also the literary artifices discussed byMaimonides. This “exoteric” procedure obscures controversial views fromthe public eye, covering them with a conventional and publicly acceptablefacade. Only the diligent and perceptive reader is able to read beyond thisfacade and discover the original insights.

Although the medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers are instru-mental in revealing to Strauss the intrinsic connection between the con-templative ideal of classical philosophy, the division of humanity intophilosophers and nonphilosophers, and the art of esoteric/exoteric writing,they are not the only, perhaps not even the primary, source. In his intro-ductory commentaries on Moses Mendelssohn’s works, he already sug-gested that Leibniz’s defense of religious orthodoxy with regard toprovidence, the immortality of the soul and eternal damnation in Causa Deiand in the Théodicée is rather a form of exoteric lip service. What Straussomits, however, is that he merely repeats a suggestion by Lessing. The lat-ter wrote the following about Leibniz:

He did no more and no less than what all of the ancient philosophersused to do in their exoteric speech. He observed a sort of prudencefor which, it is true, our most recent philosophers have become muchtoo wise. . . . I admit that Leibniz treated the doctrine of eternaldamnation very exoterically, and that esoterically he would have ex-pressed himself altogether differently on the subject.69

At the end of the same text, Lessing indicates that one ancient philoso-pher who observed this sort of prudence was Socrates, who “believed in eter-nal punishment in all seriousness, or at least believed in it to the extent thathe considered it expedient (zuträglich) to teach it in words that are least sus-ceptible of arousing suspicion and most explicit.”70 With these words as wellas in other writings, Lessing indicates that, unlike most of his contempo-raries, he had not become too wise for the wisdom of the old philosophers.Similarly, he made the distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric intothe guiding principle of his writing. This is borne out by the flexible, play-ful, and scintillating style as well as by the great erudition he displays in hisphilosophical, theological, and aesthetical works. This guise was so effectivethat even his close friend Mendelssohn admitted to being exasperated attimes by what he called Lessing’s “theatre logic,” his love of paradoxical po-sitions in both conversation and writing. As opposed to Mendelssohn, thestaunch adherent of the Enlightenment, Lessing espoused the ancient viewthat a “radical, i.e. non-dogmatic way of thinking” is inevitably at odds withprevailing opinions and must therefore conceal its views.71 As Strauss will


later argue, “Lessing was the last writer who revealed, while hiding, the rea-sons compelling wise men to hide the truth: he wrote between the lines aboutwriting between the lines.”72

By the same token, Lessing may well have been the first writer fromwhom Strauss began to learn how to read between the lines. Moreover, asan assiduous student of his undogmatic way of thinking and of his art ofwriting, Strauss knew that Lessing was familiar with medieval Jewish andIslamic theology and philosophy. It is not unlikely that this had some bear-ing on his investigations.73 Thus, in 1946 he sketches the plan of a booktentatively titled Philosophy and the Law, the final chapter of which was to bedevoted to Lessing’s Nathan der Weise. Although this well-known play isgenerally regarded as a tribute to Mendelssohn, the symbol of enlightenedtolerance, Strauss hints at a strikingly different interpretation: “The recol-lection of the man Maimonides was probably one of the motives underly-ing Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, the outstanding poetic monument erected inhonor of Jewish medieval philosophy.”74 Whether Lessing actually guidedStrauss to Maimonides’s art of writing, however, cannot be determinedwith certainty.75

At any rate, Strauss’s investigations reveal that the original esoteric-exoteric character of classical and medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophyis closely related to the problematic relationship between philosophers andnonphilosophers. As the example of the falasifa shows, this problem is pri-marily a political problem: philosophy is suspect from the perspective of thecommunity and thus requires a political justification, a demonstration thatit does not threaten or undermine the community. The painstaking carewith which the falasifa rely on Platonic politics to supply such a justificationsuggests that this challenge also posed itself for Plato. Obviously, the lat-ter was all too familiar with public and political distrust and opprobriumagainst philosophy, as it ultimately led to the execution of his teacher. Inthe Apology, Socrates points to the dangers attendant on the persistentquestioning regarding the right way of living together: “Now from this in-vestigation, men of Athens, many enmities have arisen against me, and suchas are most harsh and grievous, so that many prejudices have resulted fromthem and I am called a wise man.”76 The spoken word need not even bewritten down in order to be misunderstood. As soon as it starts to lead a lifeof its own, it gives rise to misapprehensions, such as the view that Socrates’signorance is feigned and that he is truly wise. A more striking illustration ofthe political character of Socratic questioning can hardly be found.

For whoever subscribes to the Socratic program, then, the convictionand execution of Socrates are a problem of primary importance. How can


one “remain in the question,” asking after the right way of life and the truestate, in the dark shadow of suspicion and persecution? How can one pre-serve “the sharpness, originality, and depth” of the Socratic question? Howelse, if not by means of—ambiguity? As the allusions of Avicenna and Mai-monides, as well as their approach to the revealed law suggest, Plato adoptedand developed the veiled and veiling mode of communication in response tothe political problem, the tension between philosophy and the political, legaland moral order of the polis.

In this way, we have found answers to the questions that remainedsuspended in Philosophy and Law. If the foundation of philosophy, under-stood as self-foundation, is a political problem, this means that the primaryquestion of philosophy, the question regarding the right way of life, is a po-litical question regarding the true state. At the same time, it means thatphilosophy is continually obliged to give the highest priority to reflectingon its problematic relationship to the law and the polis. The main reasonis not only that its incessant questioning of reigning opinions underminesthe foundations of the polis, but also that it permanently questions itself asa way of life. In both senses, philosophy must first and foremost be politicalphilosophy: philosophy concerned with political matters, which alwayspoint to the question regarding the right way of life, but also philosophythat has to become political in order to justify itself vis-à-vis the law and thepolis.77 This means, among other things, that philosophy in its dealingswith the polis may have to don the public attire of a teaching or doctrine.The latter, however, cannot but be ambiguous, since underneath it the per-sistent questioning regarding the true state continues.

How this ambiguity pervades Plato’s dialogues will be discussedshortly. At this point, it is necessary to return once more to Strauss’s inter-pretation of the falasifa. As we saw, in Philosophy and Law he concludes thatthe latter correct and thereby blunt Platonic political philosophy in a deci-sive respect, since they assume that the question regarding the right way oflife and the true state has been decisively answered by revelation. For thisreason, they subject the philosopher to the authority of the prophet and therevealed law, both politically and intellectually. For Strauss, however, thisfinding is unsatisfactory, for how can one claim that the falasifa are Platon-ists if they dismiss an essential characteristic of Plato’s thought as an apo-ria? Either one must assume that prophetology’s use of Plato’s philosophyis inappropriate since its intrinsic and vital ambiguity is flatly overlookedand even denied. Or one must consider whether prophetology may not insome way have preserved the ambiguity. This, however, would require afundamental revision of the interpretation.


In a series of articles published shortly after Philosophy and Law,Strauss is seen to have taken the second path. As he pursues his researchin medieval Jewish and Islamic prophetology, he comes to entertain the

view that the falasifa do not blunt or mutilate Platonic political philosophy,but rather emulate and continue it. To this view he is led in particular bycloser study of the founder of medieval Islamic philosophy, Alfarabi. Thelatter, Strauss had already noted in Philosophy and Law, “denies the possi-bility of super-philosophical knowledge of the upper world throughprophecy: through the influence of the active intellect on his intellect theprophet becomes a philosopher—nothing other and nothing higher than aphilosopher.”78 In other words, for Alfarabi the superiority of the prophetover the philosopher is restricted to the political, and does not include thetheoretical. In his subsequent research, Strauss gathers increasing evidencesuggesting that Alfarabi regards revelation chiefly and even exclusively as apolitical matter. Thus, he flatly subordinates theology and jurisprudence,the religious sciences par excellence in Islam, to political science. In doingso, he does not hesitate to regard religious knowledge as the lowest form ofknowledge, below even grammar. Just like language, this ranking implies,religion is characteristic of a particular—that is, not a universal—society.Finally, Alfarabi completely assimilates ethics, the doctrine of virtue, to politics. Virtues, he indicates, are not ends in themselves, but merelymeans by which man can attain happiness, human happiness being a purelypolitical—that is, worldly—matter.79

According to Strauss, this politicization of revealed religion bears aPlatonic stamp, as becomes apparent from the part of Alfarabi’s prophetol-ogy devoted to divine providence. This teaching chiefly consists in ademonstration supporting the law’s assertion that God’s knowledge andcaring concern extend to even the smallest things, and thus also to humanaffairs such as happiness. Divine providence, the law states, is a particularprovidence, which punishes or rewards the individual in accordance withthe moral quality of his actions. In his demonstration, however, Alfarabi in-dicates that this view belongs to the outer or exoteric meaning of the law.According to its inner or esoteric meaning, providence has no bearingwhatsoever on human action, but only on human thought. True humanhappiness, this distinction implies, cannot be attained through action butonly through seeking knowledge or philosophizing.

As Strauss shows, Alfarabi’s demonstration, including its distinctionbetween the inner and the outer meaning of the law, is derived from Plato’sLaws. In the tenth book of the Laws—a discussion of criminal law—theAthenian Stranger argues in favor of the coordination of just actions andhappiness, on the one hand, and unjust deeds and unhappiness on the


other, by referring to divine providence. In order to buttress his claim, hedevelops a theology that displays remarkable formal and substantial resem-blances to the Old Testament: the God, who is called “Father,” is a benev-olent though strict God, creator of heaven and earth, and concerned withthe minutest details of his creation.80 The Athenian Stranger’s dazzlingrhetoric, however, makes the reader forget that earlier on, in the secondbook, he had already discussed the divine coordination of virtue and happi-ness and vice and unhappiness. In this context, the Stranger had added thefollowing considerations, formulated in a deceptively conditional mode:

Even if what the argument established were not the case, could a law-giver of any worth ever tell a lie more profitable than this (if, that is,he ever has the daring to lie to the young for the sake of a goodcause), or more effective in making everybody do all the just thingswillingly, and not out of compulsion?81

Having named one such lie by way of example, the Stranger continues:

Indeed, this myth is a great example for the lawgiver of how it is pos-sible to persuade the souls of the young of just about anything, if onetries. It follows from this that the lawgiver should seek only the con-victions which would do the greatest good for the city, and he shoulddiscover every device of any sort that will tend to make the wholecommunity speak about these things with one and the same voice, asmuch as possible, at every moment throughout the whole of life, insongs and myths and arguments.82

Divine providence, Plato’s Athenian Stranger suggests, is a story thatis politically salutary and necessary for stability and concord in the state. Bydistinguishing between esoteric and exoteric providence, and by character-izing the teaching on providence as a part of political science, Alfarabi in-timates that he has understood Plato’s hint. In his prophetology, he closelyfollows the Athenian Stranger’s advice to the lawgiver: for what convictionis more beneficial for the umma, the Islamic community of the faithful,than the teachings of the Koran, interpreted in terms of Platonic politics?The transformation of the prophet into a legislator, statesman, andphilosopher, and of the law into a truly divine law with a double meaning,is a necessary artifice that exoterically shores up Islamic orthodoxy, whileesoterically it creates latitude for philosophy.83

In this way, Platonic politics enables Alfarabi to restore philosophyin its original, radical sense without exposing it to the hazards of religiouspersecution. As Strauss points out, however, the aim is the mutual protec-


tion of philosophy and the community. In Alfarabi’s lifetime in the tenthcentury, Islam is threatened with disruption and disintegration, by febrilechiliastic expectations on the one hand, and by a radical critique of Epi-curean stamp on the other. Because these turbulences endanger both thecommunity of the faithful and philosophy, Alfarabi is compelled to defendreligious orthodoxy against both overzealous fanatics and radical skeptics,as well as philosophy against religious orthodoxy, Strauss explains:

In a century that was not considerably less “enlightened” than that ofthe sophists and Socrates, when the foundations of human life, i.e., ofpolitical life, were shaken by chiliastic convulsions on the one hand, andby a critique of religion the radicalism of which is reminiscent of thefreethinkers of the 17th century on the other, Alfarabi had rediscoveredin Plato’s politics the right mean (le juste milieu) equally removed froma naturalism that only aims to hallow the savage and destructive instinctsof “natural” man, the instincts of the master and conqueror, and from asupernaturalism that tends to become the basis of a slave morality—a right mean that is neither a compromise nor a synthesis, that is notbased on the two opposite positions, but which annuls both and uprootsthem by a preliminary question, more profound, raising a more funda-mental problem, the work of a truly critical philosophy.84

What this “more fundamental problem” is becomes clear whenStrauss goes on to define the core of Platonic philosophy as “the quest forthe perfect state.”85 In other words, the more fundamental problem Alfarabiraises is nothing other than the Socratic question that at once examines thereigning doxai and itself as a way of life, and which thus brings to light theproblematic relationship between philosophy and politics. From Socratesand Plato, he learns that the self-foundation of philosophy is a politicalproblem, in the double sense discussed above: a problem that makes the po-litical things into the object par excellence of philosophy, and a problemthat compels philosophy to justify itself politically. In Plato’s work, the self-foundation of philosophy takes the form of the foundation of a divine law:in the Laws, Strauss claims, Alfarabi finds “the unbelieving, philosophicfoundation of the belief in the revelation.”86 The ambiguous character ofthis foundation points the attentive reader back to the problem of the self-foundation of philosophy, and thus to the Socratic question. As Alfarabiwrites, Plato’s works give us “an account of philosophy, but not without giv-ing us also an account of the ways to it and of the ways to re-establish itwhen it becomes confused or extinct.”87 By presenting the constitution ofthe best state as the ultimate goal of Islamic revelation, he succeeds both inupholding orthodoxy and in reviving the Socratic-Platonic query where


it has been jeopardized or even oppressed by revelation’s absolute claim toauthority.88 By presenting the revealed law equivocally as the answer to therequirements of Platonic politics, he draws the philosophic reader’s atten-tion to the questions and the problems underlying these requirements.

After Alfarabi, the other medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers aredriven by identical concerns, Strauss argues. At the end of the twelfth century,Maimonides is faced with a similar problem: rising messianic fever, on the onehand, and the controversy surrounding the rediscovery of Aristotelian philos-ophy, on the other, jeopardize obedience to the revealed law as well as thefreedom of philosophical inquiry. As a result, the need arises for a new and ad-equate defense and foundation of the law, as well as of philosophy.89 Re-sponding to this need, Maimonides turns to Platonic politics, adapting itsmeans and methods to his religious community. Thus, he identifies Moseswith the legislator-philosopher, and the Messiah with the philosopher-kingwho will restore the perfect order of the law to the people of Israel and bringeternal peace, enabling all to attain knowledge of God according to their ca-pacities.90 For in the messianic era the distinction between philosophers andnonphilosophers will continue to exist, Maimonides asserts. Like Alfarabi, heemulates Platonic politics by attributing a double meaning to the law: oneconsisting of politically necessary beliefs, and a philosophical meaning.91 AsStrauss explains, Maimonides “could make this essential distinction only in adisguised way, partly by allusions, partly by the composition of his wholework, but mainly by the rhetorical character, recognizable only to philoso-phers, of the arguments by which he defends the necessary beliefs.”92

Once prophetology is recognized as the core of their thinking, onesees that Maimonides and the falasifa are political philosophers in the orig-inal, Socratic-Platonic sense of the word: their thought is entirely in theservice of the question regarding the right way of life, a question that mustbe raised and discussed with due regard for the difference between philoso-phers and nonphilosophers.93 Already in Philosophy and Law, Strauss availedhimself of this distinction in order to point to an essential difference be-tween medieval and modern Enlightenment:

The esoteric character of the “medieval religious Enlightenment” isbased on the prevailing ideal of the theoretical life, just as the exotericcharacter of the modern Enlightenment is based on the conviction—prevalent long before its formulation, foundation and radicalizationby Kant—of the primacy of practical reason.94

Modern Enlightenment rejects the theoretical ideal of life, and thusdismisses the distinction between the philosophers and the multitude as


irrelevant, as well as the distinction between esoteric and exoteric meaning.In its view, the complete enlightenment of the multitude is not only possi-ble but even desirable: the new scientific method is capable of fully develop-ing practical reason in all men. Animated by this prospect, it strives to makepublic all the truths of philosophy, which thereby becomes completely exo-teric. A telling example is the famous exhortation of Denis Diderot, one ofthe compilers of the Encyclopédie: “Let us hasten to make philosophy popu-lar!”95 More importantly, the exoteric character of modern Enlightenmentand the primacy it accords to practical reason rest on the presupposition thatthere is no fundamental tension between philosophy and society, which phi-losophy must address and attempt to mitigate. On the contrary, modernitysets the stage for an unprecedented alliance between philosophy and politicsthat profoundly changes the face of the world within a few centuries.

However, as we saw in the previous chapter, Strauss finds that this al-liance has exacerbated philosophy’s entanglement in the impasse of the sec-ond cave. The way out of this predicament, we learned, runs along twoparallel and interrelated paths: the rediscovery of premodern philosophy inits original form, and the critical reassessment of modern philosophical tra-dition. As regards the first path, Strauss’s research into the medieval En-lightenment shows the potential of “learning through reading.” A meticulousstudy of medieval Jewish and Islamic prophetology reveals that the falasifamay have found a way of overcoming the fourth historical obstacle to philos-ophizing in Plato’s philosophy, showing them how “to re-establish it when itbecomes confused or extinct.” For a young scholar caught between Jewishreligious orthodoxy and atheism from probity, neither of which he was will-ing or able to adhere to, the prospect of resuscitating the Socratic-Platonicinquiry must have been appealing, to say the least.96 As he notes in the auto-biographical preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, it offered a way out ofthe dilemma in which he found himself:

Other observations and experiences confirmed the suspicion that itwould be unwise to say farewell to reason. I began therefore to won-der whether the self-destruction of reason was not the inevitable out-come of modern rationalism as distinguished from pre-modernrationalism, especially Jewish-medieval rationalism and its classical(Aristotelian and Platonic) foundation.97

But what about the second path? Obviously, Strauss’s remarkable re-discovery of Platonism is not barren of consequences for his investigationinto the foundations of modern thought, an investigation that is similarlyguided by the restitution of the Socratic question. An important and con-


spicuous sign is that Strauss comes to focus this research on the meetingground of Plato and the falasifa: political philosophy. What this means isborne out by a seemingly odd remark in a letter of 1935 to the renownedJewish thinker Gerschom Scholem, in which Strauss reports enthusiasticallyon his breakthrough understanding Maimonides: “If I have the time and thestrength, I want to write a book on the Guide [of the Perplexed] in the courseof about ten years. For the time being, I’m publishing an introduction to theGuide under the title: Hobbes’s political science in its development.”98 Inthe work of Thomas Hobbes, the process is brought to completion thatStrauss, in his introductions to Mendelssohn, had circumscribed as “thesuppression of law understood as obligation in favor of right understood asclaim.” For this reason, Hobbes is not only one of the fathers of political lib-eralism, but also one of the founders of modern political thought in general.The Hobbesian revolution in political philosophy decisively contributed tosuppressing the ancient concept of nomos and supplanting it by the conceptof natural law, clearing the path for the rise of practical reason. For this rea-son, Strauss regards a long and detailed study of Hobbes’s work a conditiosine qua non to break the spell of modern concepts.

“A Horizon Beyond Liberalism”:The Debate with Carl Schmitt

In the previous chapters, we saw that the most important turns and break-throughs in Strauss’s research are accompanied by a debate with a contem-porary thinker. His research on Hobbes is no exception, although this timehis interlocutor is not Hermann Cohen but a passionate advocate ofHobbes in interbellum Germany: the notorious legal scholar and politicalthinker Carl Schmitt. The latter, in a controversial book of 1932 entitledThe Concept of the Political, undertakes a spirited defense of the politicalagainst what he considers to be its neutralization by modern liberalism. Ac-cording to Schmitt, the political is ultimately predicated on the distinctionbetween friend and foe, and thus on the possibility of armed conflict. Inthis context, he hails Hobbes, the philosopher of the war of all against all,as an ally and a kindred spirit. In the same year, Strauss publishes a lengthyreview of the book, in which he critically assesses Schmitt’s position andbrings to light its presuppositions, contradictions, and aporias.99 Moreover,he offers the reader an intriguing glimpse of his own premises.100

Strauss’s review consists of three sections, the first of which presents thechief argument of Schmitt’s book, as well as its philosophical background, andoffers some criticisms. Thus, he begins by observing that according to


Schmitt all human concepts are polemical: they do not express timeless truths,but are always directed against some opponent and thus determined by thespecific context in which they are formulated. As a result, Schmitt’s concept ofthe political must likewise be understood not as a timeless truth, but as apolemical assertion. In particular, his defense of the political is directedagainst modern liberalism’s attempt to negate it by eradicating enmity and toestablish a state on the basis of this negation. According to Schmitt, liberalismhas only succeeded in obscuring the political, not in eliminating it. With hisdefense, he wants to rescue the political from liberal oblivion by recalling theproblem of the foundation of the state. In doing so, however, he acknowl-edges one major obstacle to his endeavor: despite its shortcomings, liberalismpossesses a remarkable systematic consistency that can be refuted and re-placed only with great difficulty. As Strauss will show, Schmitt’s endeavorproves to remain entangled in the system of liberal thinking, precisely becauseit is polemical and aimed against it.101

This may explain why Strauss only discusses Schmitt’s understandingof the political in the second section. If the thesis of the political is itselfnecessarily polemical or political, this implies that its content is defined, atleast in part, by the polemic and thus by the enemy. Hence, Strauss opensthe second section by noting that Schmitt purposely declines to provide anexhaustive definition of the political. The main reason is that it is charac-teristic of liberal thought to define the political as an autonomous field ofculture, whereby the latter is understood as a sovereign human creation.For Schmitt, this is an inadmissible and even dangerous reduction: as a re-sult, Strauss observes, a renewed understanding of the political presupposesa fundamental critique of the liberal concept of culture. Nevertheless, thisimplication is obscured by the fact that Schmitt frequently refers to the po-litical as if it were indeed an autonomous “province of culture” (Kultur-provinz) like morality or aesthetics, each of which is characterized by itsown basic distinction, such as good and evil or beautiful and ugly. When hegoes on to flesh out this distinction, however, it becomes apparent that thisis not the case. In comparison with the other “provinces,” the political isfundamental, encompassing and normative because the distinction betweenfriend and foe has an existential dimension: it is oriented toward the Ernst-fall, the case of emergency, the real possibility of war and physical annihi-lation. Hence, the reaffirmation of the political necessarily requires acritique of the leveling concept of culture underlying liberalism. In order tohighlight this implication, which is merely “adumbrated” by Schmitt,Strauss reverts to a tactic he will repeatedly employ throughout the re-view.102 He makes Schmitt’s position stronger and more coherent than it


really is, by rendering explicit certain ambiguities and hesitations, and try-ing to “resolve” them in accordance with Schmitt’s guiding intention.103

This means that he elaborates the critique of the modern liberal concept ofculture that is implied in Schmitt’s defense of the political. As we will see,this exposition reveals a number of crucial flaws.

At the heart of the modern concept of culture, Strauss argues, is theview that culture as a whole is the autonomous and sovereign creation ofthe human mind, of which the political is just one particular instance.104

This view, however, fails to appreciate that in its original meaning cultureis never simply autonomous and sovereign, since it always presupposessomething that is cultivated: nature.105 In order to recall this relationship,Strauss makes a distinction crucial to his critique. He reminds the readerthat “to cultivate” can have two distinct meanings. Either it can be under-stood in the original classical sense, as “the careful cultivation of nature—whether of the soil or of the human mind; in this it obeys the indicationsthat nature itself gives.”106 Or it can be understood in the modern sense as“overcoming nature by obedience to nature. . . . In that case, culture is notso much faithful cultivation of nature as a harsh and cunning fight againstnature. Which understanding of culture is accepted depends on how natureis understood: whether as an order seen as a model or whether as disorderwhich is to be removed. In either view culture is cultivation of nature.”107

Recalling this original dependency does not suffice, however. Onealso has to raise the question of what is exactly understood by “nature.” AsStrauss specifies, “culture” refers primarily to human nature as its basis.Human nature, moreover, has specific characteristics:

since man is by nature an animal sociale, the human nature underly-ing culture is the natural living together of men, i.e. the mode inwhich man—prior to culture—behaves towards other men. The termfor the natural living together thus understood is status naturalis. Onemay therefore say: the foundation of culture is the status naturalis.108

On the basis of this definition of nature, Strauss further determinesthe modern concept of culture. In the modern sense, “culture” denotes thestruggle against the status naturalis, against the natural form of living to-gether. The most original formulation of this view, he notes, can be foundin the work of Hobbes, who defines the status civilis as the negation of the sta-tus naturalis. For Hobbes, the state of nature is the greatest conceivable dis-order, a status belli or condition of war. As Strauss goes on to remark, thereis a noticeable parallel between Hobbes’s state of nature and the political as


Schmitt understands it, which explains why the latter acts as a modern defender of the Hobbesian state of nature against the neutralizing oblivionof modern liberalism.

Closer scrutiny of this parallel, however, reveals profound differencesbetween Schmitt and Hobbes. As Strauss points out, if the parallel is sound,the Hobbesian negation of the status naturalis actually means the negationof the political in the sense of Schmitt. He notes, ironically enough in anunassuming footnote, “In fact [Hobbes] is the anti-political thinker, if weunderstand ‘political’ in Schmitt’s sense.”109 Hobbes’s definition of thestate of nature is polemical, Strauss points out: it is intended to justify thenegation of the status naturalis and the transition to the status civilis. That iswhy the state of nature is for him an untenable condition of war of allagainst all, a war with only enemies and no friends.110 In comparison, andcontrary to his own claim, Schmitt’s defense of the state of nature as astruggle between hostile groups no longer appears as polemical and nega-tive, but rather as positive or affirmative.111

Moreover, Hobbes’s definition of the state of nature shows that hisconcept of the state is, in fact, opposed to that of Schmitt. For Hobbes, thenatural right to self-preservation is the ultimate limit of state power, to theextent that the state must guarantee full security to the individual and cannever demand the latter’s total self-sacrifice. By providing security, thestate guarantees freedom to the citizens in order to freely acquire wealth,not by waging war, but by trade, labor, and frugality, assisted by scienceand technology. For this reason, Strauss argues, Hobbes cannot be the allySchmitt takes him to be. On the contrary, Hobbes is no less than thefounder of the modern ideal of civilization and thus of the liberalismSchmitt opposes so vehemently: “Hobbes is to a much higher degree than,say, Bacon, the originator of the ideal of civilization. By this very fact he isthe founder of liberalism.”112

By providing man with an inalienable right to self-preservation limit-ing the power of the state, Hobbes laid the basis for the rise of other humanrights. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between the founderand those who continued to build on his foundation, Strauss holds: Hobbeswas still aware that he had to defend the liberal ideal of civilization againstthe “illiberal” state of nature, against what he considered to be the “naturalevil” of man. In his view, this natural evil set limits to the abolition of thestate of nature, so that it was necessary to expand the authority of the state asfar as possible as was consistent with the individual right to self-preservation.Once the ideal of civilization had been constituted, however, this original opposition was forgotten. Awareness of the limits of the civilizational project


yielded to the belief in the unlimited creative powers of the human mind, expressed in the concept of culture. According to Strauss, Schmitt also seemsto partake of this oblivion in making Hobbes a champion of the political. Itstrengthens Strauss’s impression that Schmitt’s critique of liberalism remainsdependent on liberal presuppositions: “Whereas Hobbes, living in an illib-eral world, lays the foundation of liberalism, Schmitt, living in a liberalworld, undertakes the critique of liberalism.”113

In the third section of his review, Strauss will argue that this is indeedthe case and assess the implications for Schmitt’s endorsement of the polit-ical. Before considering this section, however, it is necessary to return toStrauss’s discussion of the relationship between culture and nature. Thereader cannot but be struck by the fact that Strauss only broaches the con-trast between the ancient and the modern concept of culture in order toargue that in both cases culture always relates to nature: in the classicalview, this relationship is complementary, while the modern view sees it asan opposition. However, when he goes on to specify nature as human na-ture, he focuses exclusively on Hobbes as the founder of the modern con-cept of the culture, who viewed the status civilis as the negation of the statusnaturalis. The classical view and its ramifications, it seems, are passed overin near silence.

Or are they? As Strauss specifies, man is by nature an animal sociale, asocial animal: human nature is equivalent to the natural living together ofhuman beings, the status naturalis that lies at the basis of culture. Withinthe context of Strauss’s discussion, this specification is noteworthy: Strausscannot but have been aware that Hobbes’s understanding of the state of na-ture implies that man is not a social animal, but rather an “arrant Wolfe”engaged in a struggle for life with others.114 By remaining silent on this im-plication, he draws our attention to the connection between the classicalconcept of culture and the classical understanding of the state of nature.This connection can be elaborated as follows: if culture is the careful culti-vation of nature in accordance with the indications of nature, if nature isprimarily human nature, and if man is by nature a social animal, it followsthat cultivating human nature consists in developing the natural living to-gether of man in accordance with the indications of nature. It is importantto note that, according to the classical view, the state of nature is a socialor political condition, animal sociale being the Latin translation of the Aris-totelian definition of man as a zôion politikon.115 “Culture” in the classicalsense thus means the careful development of political life in accordancewith the indications of nature.116 Similarly, the reference to culture as thecultivation of the human mind in obedience to the indications of nature


echoes the Ciceronian definition of philosophy as cultura animi or cultiva-tion of the soul.117 Thus, in referring to the ancient concept of culture andthe social animal, Strauss appropriates the classical understanding of thepolitical. As we will see, this understanding differs both from the Hobbe-sian and from the Schmittian view.

At the beginning of the third section, Strauss recapitulates the resultsof the comparison between Schmitt and Hobbes: while Hobbes polemicallynegates the political, Schmitt unpolemically posits it. According to Schmitt,the political, the possibility of physical death is a reality impervious to nor-mative and evaluative judgment, an inescapable destiny that manifests itselfmost strongly where man tries to escape or suppress it. The political is a fun-damental trait of human life, so much so that it determines man’s humanity:for Schmitt, abandoning the political signifies abandoning humanity. Never-theless, this firmness is relative, Strauss observes, for even if the political isreal and incontrovertible in the present, Schmitt confesses to being uncertainwhether the future will not be entirely neutralized and depoliticized.

According to Strauss, the ultimate premise of the political in Schmitt’sview proves to be an anthropological position: man is by nature evil, not in amoral sense, but in the sense of “dangerousness,” and thus in need of beingkept in check. Once again, however, Schmitt undermines his own position byasserting that human dangerousness is ultimately an “anthropological pro-fession of faith.”118 If that is the case, Strauss rejoins, the thesis of the politi-cal is based on a belief that is no more plausible than the belief underlying theopposite view, according to which man is by nature good. Moreover, in thatcase the political is not an inexorable fate, but something that is threatenedby the exertions of the opposite camp. As a result, Schmitt is forced to domore than simply posit: he is compelled to affirm the political and thus to af-firm human dangerousness.

The affirmation of the political, however, cannot belong to the po-litical itself, in the sense that it can be described as an inescapable destiny:groups of human beings engaged in a life-and-death battle do not wish oraffirm the dangerousness of their enemies. Nor do they wish or affirm theirown dangerousness for its own sake, but only to ward off the enemy.119

Hence, Schmitt’s affirmation of the political must have extrapoliticalgrounds, Strauss suggests: more particularly, it conceals a moral stance thatis not based on the glorification of war and warrior virtues, but on the con-viction that man needs authority and guidance because of his dangerous-ness. Nevertheless, Schmitt denies that his authoritarian premise has amoral character. Following seventeenth-century philosophers of the statesuch as Hobbes, Spinoza, and Samuel von Pufendorff, he characterizes


human dangerousness and evil as a natural, animal force (naturae potentia).Here again, however, Schmitt chooses the wrong allies, Strauss contends:the seventeenth-century thinkers embraced this definition of human dan-gerousness because they denied that man is a sinful creature and becausethey rejected the primacy of duty and the state over individual naturalright. In addition, they held the view that man is an animal capable of ac-quiring wisdom through negative experiences, and thus educable. WhileHobbes still held this possibility to be so limited as to warrant a defense ofstate absolutism, his views did not prevent his successors from expandinghuman educability exponentially. In this respect, seventeenth-century an-thropology lies at the basis of both liberalism and anarchism, and as such itis unsuited for Schmitt’s purposes. His authoritarian affirmation of the po-litical and his critique of liberalism require that a meaningful distinctioncan be made between good and evil, and that human evil can be regarded inmoral terms:

In order to launch the radical critique of liberalism that he has in mind,Schmitt must first eliminate the conception of human evil as animal evil,and therefore as “innocent evil,” and find his way back to the concep-tion of human evil as moral depravity. Only by so doing can Schmitt re-main in agreement with himself, if indeed “the core of the political ideais the morally exacting decision” (Political Theology, 56).120

That Strauss quotes from Schmitt’s Political Theology (1922), some-thing he only does twice in the whole review, is anything but coincidental.It tacitly suggests that Schmitt’s moral concern has theological roots. Inthis respect, it is noteworthy that Strauss points out the difference betweenSchmitt and the seventeenth-century thinkers on the issue of sin andhuman evil. Moreover, we should not forget Schmitt’s own characteriza-tion of the thesis of human dangerousness as “an anthropological confes-sion of faith.” Contrary to Schmitt’s denial, his defense of the political hasan unmistakable moral core. Nevertheless, the question remains as to howhe can affirm the political, understood as human moral wickedness. Ac-cording to Strauss’s explanation, the affirmation of the political is, in fact,an “objectifying” and “value-free” guise underneath which Schmitt hideshis deep moral aversion at the prospect of a completely neutralized and de-politicized world. Behind the thesis of the political is a defense of the moralseriousness of life, threatened with complete extinction by the onslaught ofa society focused on amusement and consumerism. This seriousness is de-pendent on fundamental moral disagreements that confront human beings


with existential and moral decisions, and which remind man of—as Strausscalls it—“the things that really count” (worauf es eigentlich ankommt).121

Hence, Strauss concludes, Schmitt in reality wishes to affirm the moral:“The affirmation of the political is in the last analysis nothing other thanthe affirmation of the moral.”122

Further corroboration of this thesis, Strauss adds, is found in Schmitt’sperception of the modern process of depoliticization. According to Schmitt,this process did not so much cause changes in the “fatal” character of the po-litical—conflicts continue to occur in modernity—as in the object of politicaldisagreement, “the things that count.” The latter always depend on a domi-nant background theme, such as theology, metaphysics, morality or econom-ics. In its pursuit of agreement, security and peace at any price, modernity hastried to introduce a dominant background theme that no longer would giverise to conflict, an ultimate neutral ground: technology, which would allowman to concentrate exclusively on the means without having to refer to thecontentious and explosive issue of the ends. For Schmitt, however, turningaway from this issue would mean turning away from the moral seriousnessthat determines man’s humanity. Strauss encapsulates this view in a passagethat at the same time allows us to catch a glimpse of his own position:

Yet agreement can always be reached in principle about the means toan already established end, whereas the ends are always controversial:we disagree with one another and with ourselves always only aboutthe just and the good (Plato, Euthyphro 7b–d and Phaedrus 263a). Iftherefore one wishes agreement at any price, there is no other waythan to abandon altogether the question of what is right and to limitone’s concern exclusively to the means.123

As the passage shows, once again Strauss interprets and assessesSchmitt’s problem against a classical background. While he agrees that be-hind the political struggle there is a moral concern, his understanding differsfrom that of Schmitt, insofar as it is guided not by political theology, but byPlatonic political philosophy. In the passage of the Euthyphro he cites,Socrates asks his interlocutor what things cause disagreement betweenhuman beings to develop into enmity. A dispute about numbers, size, orweight, he observes, can easily be resolved by counting, measuring, or weigh-ing. This resort is lacking, however, when the object of disagreement is thegood, the noble, and the just or their opposites. These are “the questionsabout which you and I and other people become enemies, when we do be-come enemies, because we differ about them and cannot reach any satisfac-tory agreement.”124 In the passage of the Phaedrus cited by Strauss, Socrates


makes a similar distinction. Everyone agrees to the meaning of words like“iron” or “silver,” he says. But what happens in the case of terms such as “jus-tice” or “goodness”? “Do we not part company, and disagree with each otherand with ourselves?”125 “The things that count,” the things that are reallycontentious, Strauss holds with Socrates and Plato, are the good, the noble,and the just. These matters divide human beings in opposed groups and thusdetermine the content of the political.

It is no accident that, in the passage just quoted, Strauss tacitly re-places the “moral” by “the question of what is right.” Although he nowherementions Socrates by name in the review, he indicates that both the frame-work and the criterion of his critique of Schmitt are defined by the Socraticquestion. The latter not only addresses the most serious moral issues, butalso the most serious political matter: “the things that count,” the right andgood way of life, is essentially the right and good way of living together.Moreover, the Socratic question recognizes the primacy of duty—thelaws—over the rights of the individual, even if it understands this duty in avery specific way, as something to be scrutinized by the philosopher.126

Against this background, Strauss develops his own perspective on theprocess of neutralization and depoliticization. The modern pursuit of peaceand agreement at any price and the search for a neutral ground, he argues,are ultimately based on a rejection of the Socratic question regarding theright way of life. However, insofar as the capacity to raise this question isthe highest and most urgent human task, neutralization and depoliticiza-tion also entail the loss of man’s humanity:

Agreement at any price is possible only as agreement at the price of themeaning of human life, for such agreement is possible only when manabandons the task of raising the question regarding what is right, andwhen man abandons this question, he abandons his humanity. Butwhen he asks the question of what is right in earnest, there arises (giventhe “inextricably problematic character” of what this question is about)conflict, life-and-death conflict: by the seriousness of the question ofwhat is right, the political—the division of the human race into foesand friends—is justified (hat das Politische . . . seinen Rechtsgrund).127

The fundamental and often volatile disagreement about the good andthe just that divides humanity is justified by the seriousness of the philosophicquestion regarding the right way of life, which is a political question. Thesame problem that underlies the political also propels the Socratic question,and finds its ultimate justification in it. Without disagreement regarding theright way of life, the question would come to a halt. It should be noted that,


once again, Strauss selects his words carefully: while the term “Rechtsgrund”doubtless has particular resonance for an eminent legal scholar like Schmitt, itis also an important pointer to his own position. As it was argued in the previ-ous chapters, one of the keys to Strauss’s early works is the Rechtsfrage, thequestion of the legitimacy of modernity in its pervasive critique of the pre-modern religious and philosophical traditions. In the wake of his investigationof Spinoza’s critique, and guided by his study of Lessing and medieval Jewishand Islamic philosophy, he learned to see this question as an instance of anolder and more fundamental question: the Socratic question of the right life.

In contrast to Schmitt, Strauss starts from the classical concept of thepolitical: the civil or political condition of man is the natural state of man,and the question regarding nature, regarding the most natural way of livingtogether, is therefore a political question.128 The philosophical affirmationof the political thus entails a critical positioning with regard to bothHobbes and Schmitt. To begin with, it is aimed as much against theHobbesian negation of the political as against its historical effects. To someextent, Strauss shares Schmitt’s aversion of the prospect of a depoliticizedglobal community of consumers, of the pursuit of peace and security at anyprice, and of the blind faith in the stabilizing power of technology.129 Nev-ertheless, he is less interested in the consequences of Hobbes’s negation ofthe political than in the philosophical motivation that informs it. As we willsee later on, his principal objection against Hobbes is not so much that hehas made the Socratic question impossible, but rather that he gave rise tothe ideals of culture and civilization without having properly raised or evenunderstood the question in the first place.130 Second, the Socratic under-standing of the political indicates a decisive step in bringing to light thehidden premises and difficulties of Schmitt’s position. Strauss’s general tac-tic consists in approaching and reinforcing Schmitt’s thesis as a political-philosophical thesis, in order to show subsequently that it can only lead toa radical critique of liberal thought when it is based on classical politicalphilosophy and thus on the Socratic question.

In the remainder of his review, Strauss returns to his earlier observa-tion that underlying Schmitt’s affirmation of the political is, in fact, an af-firmation of morality. More specifically, he wonders how this concern canbe brought into line with Schmitt’s vituperations against those who upholdthe primacy of morality over politics. Once again, the explanation can befound in Schmitt’s polemics: his critical stabs are chiefly aimed against hu-manitarian and pacifist morality, which attempts to usher in the end of pol-itics. As Strauss remarks, however, this means that Schmitt implicitlyrecognizes and acknowledges the object of his critique as a genuine moral-


ity, instead of dismissing it as a fraud or a nonentity. Moreover, Schmitt re-jects this morality on the basis of his own contrary moral position, which heclaims has become necessary in response to the process of neutralization. InSchmitt’s Weberian view, however, all moral convictions and ideals arebased on a private decision without any publicly binding character. Sincethis necessarily also applies to his moral defense of the political, he is onlyable to posit the publicly binding character of the political by reverting tothe subterfuge of presenting it as an ineluctable destiny. The success of thisstratagem, however, does not do away with the fact that Schmitt’s under-standing of morality as essentially private is, as Strauss remarks, a typicallyliberal view. This shows that Schmitt’s polemic remains essentially tied tothe conceptual framework of its opponent.

However, there is another, albeit related, difficulty. Insofar as Schmitt’saffirmation of the Hobbesian state of war concerns the state of war as such, itis entirely indifferent and neutral regarding what is actually at stake in theconflict, the specific content of the distinction between friend and foe, andthus also regarding the particular decision that underlies it. In this neutralityand indifference, it is nothing less than the mirror image of liberal neutralityand tolerance regarding every moral conviction. In this sense, Strauss argues,Schmitt’s position is in fact “liberalism preceded by a minus-sign (mitumgekehrtem Vorzeichen).”131 In this way, Strauss finds confirmation for hisinitial suggestion: Schmitt remains caught within the system of liberalthought. By dint of both its polemical and its essentially private character, hiscritique exhibits the strength and coherence of this system.

On the basis of this result, Strauss suggests that even the affirmationof the moral is not Schmitt’s ultimate target. Rather, his “last word” lies be-yond the affirmation of both the political and the moral: it is to restore “theorder of human things” (die Ordnung der menschlichen Dinge) by means of“pure, unpolluted knowledge” (integres Wissen) that must be gained from areturn to “undefiled, uncorrupted nature” (unversehrte, nicht korrupteNatur).132 As Strauss goes on to point out, however, this goal contradictsSchmitt’s own premises: the notion of “pure, unpolluted knowledge” is in-compatible with his basic proposition that all concepts are polemical anddependent on their political and existential condition. Here again, Strauss’scriticism is at once revealing of his own orientation:

For pure, unpolluted knowledge is never, except accidentally, polem-ical; and pure unpolluted knowledge cannot be gained from “the con-crete political existence,” from the situation of the age, but onlythrough a return to the origin, to undefiled, not corrupt nature.”133


The return Schmitt envisages is possible only through a recovery ofSocratic-Platonic political philosophy, Strauss argues. Although this orien-tation is not made explicit, it is, in fact, the key by which he understandsSchmitt’s guiding intention from the outset. Already at the beginning of hisreview, he notes that “Schmitt sets out to do no more than to ascertain whatis,” as if The Concept of the Political were a typical Socratic inquiry.134 Thisrapprochement, however, is only intended to bring to light the profounddifferences between Schmitt’s position and the Socratic position. From theperspective of the latter, only the classical philosophic question regardingthe best state can lead to “unpolluted knowledge” and thus to an under-standing of the political that is neither purely private nor liberal “precededby a minus-sign,” and that avoids the pitfalls of historicism and decisionism.

From the Socratic point of view, moreover, it is possible to develop amoral-political outlook on human evil without reverting to a hidden reli-gious framework as in the case of Schmitt. According to Socrates’s well-known dictum, “virtue is knowledge” and thus vice is based on ignorance.However, when one recalls that true, unpolluted knowledge is Socraticknowledge of one’s ignorance regarding the fundamental issues, it followsthat only the philosopher is truly concerned with knowledge and thus istruly virtuous. The qualitative difference between philosophers and non-philosophers implies that political disagreement regarding the good andthe just will continue to arise. Genuine agreement is possible only on thebasis of philosophic knowledge of ignorance regarding these issues.Strauss’s philosophical affirmation of the political, unlike that of Schmitt,thus leaves room for a form of friendship that is not completely determinedby the distinction between friend and foe: the friendship between philoso-phers who agree on the fundamental problems.135

For Strauss, restoring “the order of human things” is nothing lessthan the retrieval of the Socratic question from liberal oblivion. Schmitt’sunpolemical version of the Hobbesian state of nature, however, is unsuitedas a source of pure, unpolluted knowledge. Moreover, Strauss suggests,Schmitt’s polemical entanglement in liberal thought is not the only thingthat prevents him from pursuing a philosophical affirmation of the politi-cal. Ultimately, Schmitt’s affirmation of the political and the moral has atheological foundation: his polemic against liberalism is based on a politicaltheology of Christian origin, which contains a specific conception of theorder of human things and thus also a specific answer to the question of theright way of life. The supra-individual obligation Schmitt advocates is thatof a faith in revelation and incarnation, which views human moral evil inthe light of the doctrine of the Fall and of original sin. In his review, Straussalludes to this background when he argues that Schmitt’s affirmation of the


political can only prepare the radical critique of liberalism, since the latter isnot the opponent he really envisages:

The polemic against liberalism can therefore have no meaning otherthan that of a subsidiary or preparatory action. It is undertaken onlyto clear the field for the decisive battle between the “spirit of tech-nology,” the “mass faith of an anti-religious, this-worldly activism”and . . . the opposite spirit and faith, which, it seems, does not yethave a name. In the end, two completely opposed answers to thequestion of what is right permit no mediation and no neutrality. . . .Schmitt’s ultimate concern is then not the fight against liberalism.For this very reason the affirmation of the political as such is not hislast word. His last word is “the order of human things.”136

With measured irony, Strauss intimates that the name of “the oppo-site spirit and faith” is all too well-known to him. The final battle Schmittwishes to initiate is the fight between his Christian faith and modern ac-tivist atheism. It is hardly surprising that Strauss characterizes both oppo-nents as answers to “the question of what is right.” As we saw in theprevious chapter, he criticizes modern atheism from probity as a form ofbelief tributary to biblical morality. In this respect, both opponents are dis-tinguished from classical, Socratic-Platonic philosophy, which does not at-tempt to mediate let alone synthesize, but rather harks back to and persistsin what precedes both answers: the question of what is right. For we shouldnot forget that, according to Strauss, “by the seriousness of the question ofwhat is right, the political is justified.”137

With his remark about Schmitt’s “last word,” Strauss reveals thechasm between political theology and political philosophy, precisely by indicating how Schmitt conceals his political-theological position behindan ostensible return to nature and the thesis of the ineluctability of the political. His critical reading of The Concept of the Political shows thatSchmitt’s stratagem is inspired by the power of liberal thought, whichcontinues to exhibit an “astoundingly consistent system” despite the fail-ure of the process of neutralization.138 From Schmitt’s attempt, Strausslearns that, in order to escape from the hold of the liberal system, onemust face its originator:

The critique of liberalism that Schmitt has initiated can therefore becompleted only when we succeed in gaining a horizon beyond liber-alism. Within such a horizon Hobbes achieved the foundation of lib-eralism. A radical critique of liberalism is therefore possible only onthe basis of an adequate understanding of Hobbes.139


While this is indeed the “urgent task” Strauss sets himself, its formula-tion is somewhat deceptive. It seems to suggest that adequately understandingHobbes is both the necessary and the sufficient condition for gaining a hori-zon beyond liberalism. In fact, as Strauss’s scattered allusions in the reviewshow, he has already begun to recover the horizon beyond liberalism withinand against which Hobbes founded liberalism and the modern concept of culture: the horizon of nomos or law as a “concrete binding order of life,” com-mon to revealed religion and Socratic-Platonic philosophy. This is corrobo-rated by a remark in Philosophy and Law, where he argues with explicitreference to his review of Schmitt that “‘religion’ and ‘politics’ are the factsthat transcend ‘culture’ or, to be more precise, the original facts.”140 Accord-ing to its own self-understanding, religion cannot be reduced to one culturalproduct among many because it is based on a claim to truth and obediencethat is not of human but of divine origin. Similarly, politics in the classicalview is not a cultural product but a natural condition of man. If religion andpolitics are cruces or stumbling blocks for liberalism and the modern conceptof culture, by the same token they are the necessary point of departure for aradical critique:

[T]he radical critique of the concept of “culture” is possible only inthe form of a “theologico-political treatise,”—which of course, if it isnot to lead back again to the foundation of “culture,” must take exactlythe opposite direction from the theologico-political treatises of theseventeenth century, especially those of Hobbes and Spinoza. Thefirst condition for this would be, of course, that these seventeenth-century works no longer be understood, as they almost always havebeen up to now, within the horizon of philosophy of culture.”141

Here again, Strauss is reticent about the fact that Philosophy and Lawitself is already an attempt to meet these requirements. It is a “theologico-political treatise” that aims to recover the ancient “illiberal” horizon ofnomos against which Hobbes and Spinoza established liberalism, modernculture, and civilization. In this process, Strauss is guided by the medievalIslamic and Jewish philosophers, whose own theologico-political treatisesindeed run counter to those of Hobbes and Spinoza, insofar as they pointback to Socrates and Plato.142 In this sense, Philosophy and Law shows howStrauss is learning to look at modernity from the perspective of premodernthought, an effort that also informs his review of Schmitt. This may clarifya particularly enigmatic statement in his autobiographical preface to Spin-oza’s Critique of Religion, in which he alludes to his breakthrough. Taking astern and critical look at his first book, he writes:


The present study was based on the premise, sanctioned by powerfulprejudice, that a return to pre-modern philosophy is impossible. Thechange of orientation which found its expression, not entirely by ac-cident, in the article published at the end of this volume, compelledme to engage in a number of studies in the course of which I becameever more attentive to the manner in which heterodox thinkers ofearlier ages wrote their books.143

The “article published at the end of this volume” to which Straussrefers is none other than the review of Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political,which was reprinted at the end of the first edition of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. The “change of orientation” that found its first expression in thiswriting is his overcoming of the historicist prejudice and the rediscovery oforiginal Platonic philosophy, its Socratic program, and its particular art ofwriting. Nevertheless, why does Strauss add that this change found its firstexpression “not entirely by accident” in the review of Schmitt? With thebenefit of hindsight, it is possible to suggest an answer. As we have seen, themoment of his philosophical breakthrough coincides with his departurefrom political Zionism, political activism, and modern politics as such. Withthe recovery of the Socratic question and the Platonic horizon, Strauss encounters a way of life that proves to be more fulfilling than the politicallife. As he notes in one of the early lectures mentioned earlier, “Socratesgives an answer to the question regarding the right way of life: raising thequestion regarding the right way of life—this alone is the right way of life.”144

This may help explain why Strauss chooses to divulge his “change oforientation” in a commentary on The Concept of the Political. In Schmitt, hefinds not only an acute critic of liberalism, but also a powerful defender ofthe two authoritative alternatives to the philosophic life he is trying to re-cover.145 For within the illiberal horizon, politics and religion are the two“original facts” the philosophic life has to face in order to justify itself andthus be truly philosophic. Schmitt’s political theology offered an appropri-ate opportunity for Strauss to test this new understanding of the theologi-cal-political problem. Subsequently, he is able to turn to a thinker who, likeSpinoza, wrote theological-political treatises in order to establish the liberalhorizon that would eclipse the original facts.


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CHAPTER 5

Socrates and the Leviathan

We may as bootless spend our vain commandUpon the enraged soldiers in their spoil

As send precepts to the leviathanTo come ashore.

—Shakespeare, Henry V, III.3

Hobbes’s Motive

Strauss’s review of Schmitt already provides some brief indications as tohow he intends to approach his new object of research. As he notes in theconclusion, Hobbes, “living in an illiberal world, lays the foundation of lib-eralism” against the “illiberal” state of nature. The Hobbesian state of na-ture is thus a “counterconcept” (Gegenbegriff), directed as much against theBiblical notion of original sin as against the classical understanding of na-ture. This observation, however, gives rise to the same question that ani-mated Spinoza’s Critique of Religion: what is the mainspring, the motiveunderlying this opposition? As Strauss argued, Hobbes’s negation of thestate of nature is diametrically opposed to Schmitt’s affirmation of the po-litical. If the latter proves to be based on an ulterior concern (morality, inSchmitt’s case), might not this apply to the former as well?

That this question indeed forms the Leitmotiv of Strauss’s subsequentresearch on Hobbes is borne out by an article of 1933 entitled “Some Re-marks on Hobbes’s Political Science.”1 In this article, Strauss discusses theconditions and prerequisites of what he considers to be “an adequate under-standing of Hobbes.” First, he asserts, we must assume that we can learnfrom Hobbes certain things we cannot learn from the present. By admittingthat Hobbes can actually teach us something, moreover, we admit that we

know too little or perhaps even nothing at all about important present mat-ters. It also implies that we have to read his work with the utmost seriousness:

This imposes on the interpreter the duty of seeing to it with the utmost care that the opinions reigning or tending to reign today arenot carried over into Hobbes’s thought. For every such modificationof the “facts” would from the outset deprive the study of Hobbes’spolitics of the possible benefit it might have for the elucidation ofcurrent political opinions.2

Subsequently, Strauss goes on to explain what this approach consistsof: one must pay attention to the internal coherence of Hobbes’s work, andlook for its most original and most authentic “tendency” (Tendenz). The lat-ter, he claims, comes to light most clearly where Hobbes turns against thetradition. On this point, Strauss takes issue with contemporary interpreta-tions, which locate Hobbes’s antitraditional thrust in his naturalistic and sci-entific approach to ethics and politics. Against this view, he submits a crucialhistorical observation with important philosophical consequences: Hobbesonly discovered natural science and its method at an advanced age, after hisbasic ethical and political views had already taken shape.3 Of course, theolder Hobbes subsequently attempted to deduce these views from the newscientific premises. Nevertheless, Strauss wonders, doesn’t this mean thathis original antitraditional tendency can already be found in his earlier viewsand thus be understood independently of its later scientific elaboration?

[I]sn’t it possible to fully understand his political science without tak-ing into account the ulterior naturalistic foundation? . . . This possi-bility becomes a necessity, if it should turn out to be the case thatHobbes’s most profound anthropological and political thoughts areobscured rather than clarified by the ulterior naturalistic foundation(not to say anything about the fact that, in the end, naturalism as suchis not so “natural” that one would not also and precisely have to queryits human and not already scientific roots.4

As Strauss argues, there are indications that this original, antitradi-tional and nonnaturalistic basis is moral. Thus, he points out that Hobbesdistinguishes between justice and injustice already on the most fundamen-tal level of his naturalistic theory, when he establishes the “right of nature,”and not, as is generally assumed, when he goes on to establish the “law ofnature.”5 More particularly, Hobbes asserts that, in the state of nature, manmoves between two poles. On the one hand, there is the unlimited natural


desire to please oneself and to be recognized as superior by others. Thisdrive, Strauss observes, has a negative moral connotation: Hobbes charac-terizes it as vanity, because it makes man live as if in a dream and thus pre-vents him from recognizing his real situation. In this way, it leads to anincreasing striving after power and thus to ever more violent conflict.

Vanity, however, is limited and held in check by the other pole: thehuman fear of violent death at the hands of others. This fear originateswhen man is in mortal danger and is compelled to recognize death as sum-mum malum, the greatest evil. For Hobbes, this pole has a positive conno-tation: fear of violent death awakens man from his dreams of power,confronts him with reality, and makes him realize that he must squelch hisdesire in order to survive. In this way, the unlimited and unjustified naturaldesire is reduced to a limited and justified and reasonable demand, whichsubsequently comes to determine the content of the right of nature. Fearthus has an essentially rationalizing and enlightening effect: it is the sourceof human self-consciousness, reason, and conscience. With this view,Hobbes reveals himself to be an early Enlightenment thinker, Straussholds: “In the opposition between vanity and fear the Enlightenment char-acter of Hobbes’s philosophy reveals itself.”6

What is more, this fundamental opposition makes Hobbes thefounder of liberalism. It points toward the modern opposition betweenpolitics and economics, more particularly to the battle of the latter againstthe former, which for Strauss, as for Schmitt, is characteristic of liberalism:

For every fight against the political in the name of the economicalpresupposes the preliminary depreciation of the political. However,this depreciation occurs in this way, that the political, understood asthe domain of vanity, prestige and the will to dominate (Geltungswille),is opposed—either covertly or openly—to the economical, under-stood as the world of rational, pragmatic and modest labor.7

The bourgeois ideal of civilization and enlightenment founded byHobbes aims at general stability for the sake of peaceful production andtrade. Since politics is perceived as the realm of vanity and strife, this goalcan only be attained through economics, the realm of rationality and sobri-ety. At the same time, Strauss holds, the Hobbesian opposition of vanityand fear also points back to the past. At first view, it may seem to be thesecularized equivalent of the old Christian opposition between superbia(pride) and humilitas (humility). According to Strauss, however, this oppo-sition, while influential, was not decisive, since Hobbes denies sin, and his

SOCRATES AND THE LEVIATHAN 151

natural law doctrine aims precisely to distinguish meaningfully betweengood and evil on the basis of man’s natural state. Rather, the opposition be-tween vanity and fear is a modern modification of an antagonism intro-duced by Socrates and Plato, between the illusory good pursued in politicsand the true good pursued by philosophy, or between opinion and knowl-edge. As Hobbes characteristically claims, his modern version of this oldantagonism exhibits a more profound understanding of human nature. Inorder to assess this claim, Strauss suggests, it must be compared and con-fronted with the Socratic-Platonic claim:

The path from vanity to fear is the way from unreflectiveness (Besin-nungslosigkeit) to circumspection (Besonnenheit), from the shining delu-sion of “the political life” to the truly Good that is only accessible torational understanding. This means: the opposition vanity-fear is themodern modification, determined by Christianity, of the oppositionclassically expounded by Socrates-Plato. For this reason, a radical un-derstanding and a well-founded judgment of Hobbesian politics is infact only possible if one confronts it directly with Platonic politics.Only in this way can it be ascertained whether the modification, in-tended by Hobbes and in fact determined by Christianity, of ancientideas is actually based on a more profound understanding of humannature, and what this concern for “profundity” actually entails.8

As in the case of Spinoza, Hobbes’s claim to greater originality andprofundity—to modernity—can only be assessed correctly “in its act or exer-cise,” in direct confrontation with the two dominant forces of the premodernilliberal horizon: Christian revealed religion and Platonic political philoso-phy.9 This approach indeed determines Strauss’s subsequent investigations,as becomes apparent from two separate book manuscripts he prepares be-tween 1933 and 1936: The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Gene-sis and Hobbes’s Critique of Religion: A Contribution to the Understanding of theEnlightenment.10 While the first manuscript is mainly devoted to Hobbes’scritical reception of Greek historians and philosophers, the title of the secondclearly indicates that it is intended as a continuation of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, focusing on Hobbes’s polemic against Christianity and revealedreligion in general.

In spite of the difference in focus, however, the texts are intended astwo complementary parts of one and the same endeavor. As Strauss alreadysuggests in the preliminary article, Hobbes’s critical reception of Platonicpolitics was determined by his critical reception of Christianity. Read in con-junction, the two texts make the remarkable case that Hobbes’s critique of


classical political philosophy misses its mark because he remains entangled in his polemic with Christianity. As Strauss contends at the beginning ofHobbes’s Critique of Religion: “it is revelation, respectively the polemic againstrevelation, which makes it impossible for Hobbes to recognize and appreci-ate ancient politics.”11 In good Aristotelian fashion, then, The Political Philos-ophy of Hobbes identifies the error, while Hobbes’s Critique of Religion goes on tolocate the source of the error. However, just as with Maimonides and thefalasifa, Strauss’s path ultimately leads to Socrates and Plato, and just as withthe medieval Enlightenment, Strauss not only looks at Plato’s perspectivefrom a different vantage point, but he also looks back at the vantage pointfrom Plato’s perspective.12

“The Right Order of Society”

Strauss’s Platonic orientation is reflected mainly in the composition of ThePolitical Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. After a brief introduc-tion, the second chapter deals with “The Moral Basis,” while the eighthand final chapter, “The New Political Science,” is entirely devoted to aconfrontation between Hobbes and Plato. In the preceding chapters of thebook, however, the relationship between Hobbes and classical thought isconstantly present. In the introduction, Strauss makes three decisive pointsthat clearly elaborate on the preliminary article previously discussed. Al-ready in the opening sentence, he indicates that Hobbes will be investi-gated within a framework and with a focus that cannot be identifiedotherwise than as Socratic-Platonic:

Hobbes’s political philosophy is the first peculiarly modern attemptto give a coherent and exhaustive answer to the question of man’sright life, which is at the same time the question of the right order ofsociety. . . . Hobbes’s political philosophy is of supreme importancenot only for political philosophy as such, i.e. for one branch of knowl-edge among others, but for modern philosophy altogether, if the dis-cussion and elucidation of the ideal of life is indeed the primary anddecisive task of philosophy.13

The second point takes up Strauss’s earlier position on the questionof interpretation: Hobbes’s political philosophy has a moral basis that pre-cedes and is independent of the naturalistic, scientific approach he adoptedlater. Nevertheless, this basis is entirely new when compared with the tra-dition: “The moral attitude which underlies Hobbes’s political philosophyis independent of the foundation of modern science, and at least in that


sense ‘pre-scientific’. It is at the same time specifically modern. One is inclined to say that it is the deepest stratum of the modern mind.”14 Third,Strauss connects the situation in which Hobbes thought and wrote with thepresent situation. Hobbes, he argues, raised the question of the right wayof life at a moment when the traditional answers to this question had losttheir authority, and with his own answer he laid the foundation of modernthought. This foundation, however, has been hidden from view by the fur-ther development of modern thought. “The structure which Hobbes, ledby the inspiration of the moment, began to raise, hid the foundation aslong as the structure stood, i.e. as long as its stability was believed in.”15

Now that the belief in its stability has ceased to be self-evident, it is neces-sary to return to the foundation of the structure. The necessity of this re-turn, however, points back to the question of the right life, which remainsthe focus of Strauss’s investigations throughout.

Thus, the tone is set for the second chapter, devoted to the moralbasis and basically an elaboration of the argument proposed in the prelim-inary article: at the core of Hobbes’s political philosophy is a moral posi-tion that is independent of his ulterior naturalistic and scientific approach.Underlying Hobbes’s theory of human nature, Strauss now explains, is atension between an anthropological orientation on the one hand and a nat-uralistic orientation on the other. This tension can be made visible by fo-cusing on two postulates of Hobbes’s theory, namely, “natural appetite”and “natural reason.” As Strauss observes, Hobbes offers both a purelymechanistic and a vitalistic definition of the first postulate. Despite the factthat these definitions point in markedly different directions, both refer toan irrational and unlimited striving for superiority and recognition, whichHobbes defines as “vain-glory,” “pride,” or “vanity.” This, Strauss argues,reveals the true origin of the postulate.16 In either of its definitions, the de-termination of natural appetite as vanity presupposes a moral judgment.Thus, on the fundamental level, Hobbes distinguishes between admissibleand inadmissible striving for power, while defining the natural striving forpower of man as inadmissible, vain, evil.

For this reason, Strauss firmly rejects the interpretation that Hobbessomehow attempts to construct an “amoral morality”: “Hobbes’s politicalphilosophy rests not on the illusion of an amoral morality, but on a newmorality, or, to speak according to Hobbes’s intention, on a new ground-ing of the one eternal morality.”17 At first view, this seems to be a departurefrom the line of argument he had developed against Schmitt’s moral un-derstanding of human dangerousness, arguing that for Hobbes and Spinozahuman dangerousness is mere natural force. If this is the case, however, it


does not yet mean a vindication of Schmitt’s position. Rather, Strauss triesto show that for Hobbes the normative moment is indispensable in order toestablish the core of his “new morality,” the primacy of individual rightover transindividual obligation. This becomes apparent when we look atthe second postulate, that of natural reason. Here again, Strauss points toan ambiguity: Hobbes defines this postulate both as “avoiding violent deathas the greatest natural evil” and as “preserving life as the primary good.” AsStrauss explains, the solution lies in the difference between “the primarygood” and the “greatest evil”: for Hobbes, there is no summum bonum, orhighest good, only a summum malum or greatest evil. Hence, only the fearof violent death can be a reliable foundation for a theory of human nature.18 Although this fear, like vanity, is irrational, it has a rationalizingeffect. The threat of violent death is an unexpected resistance that awak-ens man from his delusions of power and confronts him with reality. Thepower of this experience is such that Hobbes goes so far as to identifyhuman self-consciousness and human conscience with the fear of violentdeath. Fear causes man to understand that only the minimal demand ofself-preservation is legitimate and reasonable: in this respect, it constitutesthe basis for morality, law, and the state.

Like vanity, fear has a moral significance. This, Strauss holds, is borneout by the fact that, in the state of nature, Hobbes holds every action to beadmissible, but not every intention. While every action can be considerednecessary for self-preservation, only those intentions that spring from thefear are justified. As a result, the right of nature also has a moral content: con-trary to what is generally assumed, Hobbes makes a meaningful distinctionbetween just and unjust that precedes the conclusion of the social contract andthe subsequent obligation to honor it. According to Strauss, this distinction,the basis of Hobbes’s political philosophy, is “not the naturalistic antithesisof morally indifferent animal appetite (or of morally indifferent human striv-ing after power) on the one hand, and morally indifferent striving after self-preservation on the other, but the moral and humanist antithesis offundamentally unjust vanity and fundamentally just fear of violent death.”19

Moreover, Strauss again cautions against reducing this antithesis to a secu-larized version of the biblical antithesis between superbia and humilitas. Re-gardless of whether there is actually a connection, this would fail to do justiceto the specific, positive significance of Hobbes’s endeavor: to find a mean-ingful distinction between just and unjust that is in accordance with humannature as such. Without such a distinction, his political theory would end upin a complete naturalism incapable of differentiating between power and le-gitimacy, between force and law. Only by giving the fundamental antithesis


a moral content was Hobbes able to present his natural right doctrine as ananswer to “the specifically human problem of right.”20

In the fourth chapter of his book, Strauss further elaborates the con-nection between the moral character of fear as the basis of legitimate inten-tions and the primacy of natural right. This he does by focusing on thehistorical shifts in Hobbes’s attitude with regard to aristocratic virtue. As heshows, Hobbes initially had great admiration for the moral views of the aris-tocratic Cavendish family, for whom he worked as a teacher and a secretary.He integrated this admiration in an Aristotelian framework by means of theconcept of megalopsuchia (magnanimitas or “great-souledness”), by which heunderstood ambition, heroism, and courage. As he developed his new po-litical philosophy, however, he moved away from both the aristocratic idealand Aristotelianism. At first, Hobbes no longer regarded magnanimity as astate (hexis) in which man exists, but rather as an intention. Subsequently, hediscarded magnanimity altogether and only retained intention as a moralprinciple.21 The turn toward intention was thus accompanied by a departurefrom the Aristotelian framework in which virtue was measured by a bind-ing natural order:

The intention becomes for Hobbes the one and only moral principle,because he no longer believes in the existence of an “objective” prin-ciple according to which man must order his actions—in the existenceof a natural law which precedes all human volition . . . The denial of anatural law, of an obligation which precedes all human contracts, isthe final reason why the intention . . . is considered as sufficient reasonfor all virtue.”22

The denial of a natural law preceding all human volition is accompa-nied by the recognition of a natural right that precedes all obligations. Be-hind this natural right, we saw earlier, is ultimately the antithesis betweenvanity and fear of violent death. Only the latter can give rise to a legitimateintention, which shows that for Hobbes fear is indeed the foundation ofmorality.23 By regarding the fear of violent death and the right to self-preservation as the basis for all virtues, Hobbes breaks decisively with aris-tocratic virtue. Every motive other than fear that could impel man to riskhis life is suspect in his eyes: courage, ambition, self-sacrifice, heroism, butalso patriotism. As a matter of consistency, he therefore holds desertion inwartime to be justified, though dishonorable.24 In this way, Strauss argues,he became the founder of bourgeois morality, which puts politics at theservice of the development and cultivation of justice, charity, thrift, and industry—the necessary conditions for comfortable self-preservation.25


Fear of violent death as the source of human self-consciousness isHobbes’s “last word,” Strauss asserts. It comes as no surprise, then, that hegoes on to discuss Hobbes’s relationship to classical political philosophy.Thus, he points out that for Hobbes fear is not only the basis of morality,law, and the state, but also of science or philosophy. Vanity gives rise topresumption, ignorance, prejudice, and superstition, all of which can onlybe eradicated by the sudden threat of violent death and the fear that ac-companies it. As Strauss indicates, this implies that “the world is originallyrevealed to man not by detachedly and spontaneously seeing its form, butby involuntary experience of its resistance.”26 In other words, Hobbes’sview is directly opposed to classical theoria: the origin of science is not con-templation of the natural order, but the compulsive involvement of fear,which forcibly imposes reality on man and thus has a liberating, enlighten-ing effect. It also implies that Hobbes in fact puts science at the service ofthe human interest in self-preservation and acquisition of power, an emi-nently practical function.27 As man in his naked, precarious existencecomes to occupy the center of Hobbes’s reflections, the primacy shifts fromtheory to praxis. Thus, in the third chapter, where he discusses the changesin Hobbes’s perception of Aristotle, Strauss notes: “He [Hobbes] certainlyknew and valued the joys of knowledge no less than any other philosopher;but these joys are for him not the justification of philosophy; he finds itsjustification only in benefit to man, i.e. the safeguarding of man’s life andthe increase of human power.”28

Although Hobbes abandoned scholasticism at an early stage, he heldon to Aristotelian ethics and politics for some time. According to Strauss,however, this was a “decapitated” Aristotelianism, since Hobbes replacedtheoretical philosophy and metaphysics with practical philosophy as thehighest science. This difference is closely related to a difference in their re-spective views on man’s place in the cosmos: “Aristotle justified his placingof the theoretical sciences above moral and political philosophy by the ar-gument that man is not the highest being of the universe. This ultimate as-sumption of the primacy of theory is rejected by Hobbes; in his contentionman is ‘the most excellent work of nature.’”29 According to Strauss, the es-sentially practical and anthropocentric orientation underlying Hobbes’snew political science becomes most visible in the fact that his departurefrom Aristotelianism is accompanied by a turn toward history and histori-ography. This turn, as well as in the philosophical motives that animate it,contains Hobbes’s greatest achievement, but also his greatest shortcoming.

The reason Hobbes focuses on history is his increasing doubt regard-ing the applicability and the effectiveness of traditional Aristotelianism’s


ethical precepts. Initially, he turns to history in search of examples of successand failure in their application, with a view to better understanding its con-ditions and rendering it more efficient. In this study, he pays particular at-tention to the passions, because in his view they provide the most reliableknowledge about the real motives of man.30 Subsequently, however, he rad-ically calls into question the effectiveness and applicability of the traditionalprecepts, and replaces them with the study of history now understood asmagistra vitae, a teacher of life. According to Hobbes, only the study of manas he really is allows the creation of applicable and effective norms, whereasthe traditional approach fruitlessly focuses on how man ought to be. AsStrauss remarks, with this latter view Hobbes joins the critique of traditionformulated by Machiavelli and elaborated by Francis Bacon and Spinoza.31

Finally, Hobbes comes to doubt the utility of historiography altogether.For, as Strauss observes, the practical need for applicability is ultimately de-termined by the fundamental question of the right order of society. To thisquestion, historiography seems unable to offer any effective answer.

As a result, Hobbes is led to construct a hypothetical “typical” historyfrom which the right order may be deduced: the abolishment of an unten-ably defective state of nature into a stable and secure civil state.32 The de-fectiveness of the state of nature must be magnified as far as possible, sothat the necessity of the transition to the civil state can be seen to sponta-neously follow from it. In this construction, the study of the passions nolonger fulfills a merely subordinate role, but it becomes the cornerstone.The norms of a new morality, the morality of the right order, are definedwith a view to the most extreme situation and to the passions that attend itin order to guarantee a maximum of applicability.33 In this way, we are ledback to the fundamental antithesis of vanity and fear of violent death.

In this way, the development that began with the turn to historycomes to an end. Hobbes integrates history in his new political philosophyby founding the principles of a new applicable morality on a typical ac-count. In this way, the appeal to existing historiography becomes superflu-ous. The right social order realizes itself out of and against the chaos of thestate of nature, driven by a perfectly human principle: the will, driven byfear of violent death, to abolish the state of nature.34 According to Strauss,the movement encapsulated in this anthropocentric premise is the basis ofthe modern concept of progress. Henceforth, the historical course that ledup to the present is regarded as a process of irreversible improvement thatguarantees the possibility of further improvement.35 Since all order is im-manent and of human origin, there are no limits to man’s ordering activity:this, Strauss holds, is the historical core of Hobbes’s political thought aswell as the basis of the modern concept of culture.


Hobbes’s doubts regarding the effectiveness and applicability of thetraditional precepts, which deepen as he turns toward history, are a clearsign that he is fundamentally convinced of the impotence of human reasonto apply and live according to the precepts, Strauss argues.36 The study ofman as he really is reveals that disobedience is the rule and obedience theexception. Hence, in turning to history, Hobbes aims to replace the oldmorality of obedience to a transcendent order with a morality that makesobedience realizable, by enabling man to comply with its norms despite theimpotence of reason. Hobbes’s political philosophy, which makes the polit-ical order completely immanent, is thus the most coherent and profound re-sponse to this requirement. The way in which he first turns to history, onlyto incorporate it into his new philosophy, shows that he raises the questionof the right political order exclusively and from the very beginning with aview to practical applicability. Only on the basis of his fundamental anthro-pocentric orientation does his attempt to raise the Socratic question requirethe turn to history.37 The Hobbesian answer to the question—bourgeoismorality in ovo—no longer points towards a higher order and man’s placewithin it, but only to intersubjectivity: “the right life of man is understoodexclusively as an emanation of his right self-consciousness. . . . [I]t is, inother words, not knowledge of the place which is essentially due to man inthe cosmos, but is a right consciousness in the human individual of himselfin relation to other human individuals.”38

Once again, Strauss contrasts Hobbes’s position with the classical viewhe opposes and rejects. Still, he goes on to ask, what exactly does Hobbesoppose when he puts man at the center, doubts the power of human reason,and turns to history? After all, he could raise the issue of the applicability ofthe traditional moral precepts only because he assumed that the preliminaryissue—the philosophical foundation of the precepts themselves—had beensettled in an authoritative and thus self-evident manner by tradition, moreprecisely by Aristotle:

Because the formulation and the explanation of these precepts hadbeen fully and adequately completed by Aristotle, because the pri-mary philosophic problem had been solved, because its solution hadbecome a matter of course, because of all this a philosopher likeHobbes had the leisure and the opportunity to give thought to thesecondary problem of the application of the precepts.39

In this passage, Strauss implicitly passes a critical judgment: insteadof relying on the traditional view and taking the Aristotelian solution forgranted, “a philosopher like Hobbes” should have concentrated first on


“the primary philosophic problem.” What this problem entails is madeclear in the final chapter of The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, where Straussdevelops his initial remark into a full-fledged and incisive critique, the coreof which can be summarized as follows. In conceiving his new, antitradi-tional political philosophy, Hobbes starts from the traditional assumptionthat political philosophy is possible and even necessary. In this assumption,however, the founder of modern political philosophy differs from thefounders of classical political philosophy: for Socrates and Plato, the possi-bility and necessity of political philosophy are and remain a permanentproblem, insofar as the question “How should we live?” is always coevalwith the question “Why philosophy?” and thus insofar as the question ofthe right life is always a political question.40

Blinded on this decisive point by the Christian-Aristotelian tradition,Hobbes launches his antitraditional philosophy from a position that is in-sufficiently radical and thus insufficiently philosophical. This, Strauss ar-gues, is the reason why he came to regard the conception of a new politicalphilosophy as a question of method only after he had discovered Euclid-ean geometry and Galilean natural science. This discovery consolidated, asit were, the initial oblivion at the heart of his political philosophy:

[T]he introduction of this method into political philosophy presupposesthe previous narrowing-down of the political question, i.e. the elimina-tion of the fundamental question as to the aim of the State. The intro-duction of Galileo’s method into political science is thus bought at theprice that the new political science from the outset renounces all discus-sion of the fundamental, the most urgent question. This neglect of thetruly primary question is the result of Hobbes’s conviction that the ideaof political philosophy is a matter of course. Hobbes does not questionthe possibility and necessity of political philosophy; in other words, hedoes not ask first “what is virtue?” and “can it be taught?” and “what isthe aim of the State?”, because these questions have been answered forhim by tradition, or by common opinion.41

Hobbes’s blindness to the nontraditional origins of the tradition ofclassical political philosophy becomes apparent when we focus on the con-nection between his discovery of geometry and of the modern scientificmethod and his attitude with regard to Plato, Strauss argues. From the mo-ment Hobbes becomes acquainted with the work of Euclid and Galileo, hebegins to develop the idea of an exact and scientific approach to morality andpolitics. On the one hand, this desideratum leads to a departure from Aristo-tle, who contends that the scientific understanding of moral and political


things can only be approximate and imprecise. On the other hand, Hobbes’squest for an exact science of politics is accompanied by a growing admirationfor Plato. Unlike Aristotle, Hobbes holds, Plato succeeded in liberating him-self from the spell cast over human understanding by the senses, the passions,words, and opinions. Plato’s distrust of ordinary language and doxa led himto embrace a paradoxical political science critical of sense perception andguided by the Ideas and mathematics instead of by words.

According to Strauss, this view is nothing less than a caricature, basedon a misunderstanding of the actual relationship between Aristotle andPlato.42 For in reality Plato chooses to be guided by words, and by wordsalone. Of course, Strauss does not deny that Plato was critical with regardto ordinary language and its confusing, conflict-inducing imprecision.However, he rejects the inference that, as a result, Plato abandoned ordi-nary language altogether in his philosophy. On the contrary, he writes,“Plato’s theory that the causes of things, the ideas, have a transcendent in-dependent existence, rests on the fact that the ideas show this indepen-dence in speech. . . . Plato ‘takes refuge’ from things in human speechabout things as the only entrance into the true reasons of things which isopen to man.”43 Access to the ideas as the true causes is found in Socraticdialectic, which confronts contradictory opinions in search of the truth be-hind the contradiction. This truth is thus truly paradoxical and warrantsthe partial truth of the contradictory opinions:

The most obvious contradictions which underlie every contentionand every enmity, concern the just, the beautiful, and the good. Andyet men are in greater concord as regards the good than as regardsany other subject, and in such a fashion that this real concord is theultimate ground of all possible concord.44

Precisely this “ultimate ground”—the object of Socratic inquiry—is absent in Hobbes’s reading of Plato.45 Inspired by the Cartesian pursuit of amathesis universalis, a universal language, Hobbes starts from the erroneous—though immensely influential—assumption that Plato developed an ontologyor “physiology” in order to transcend the contradictoriness of ordinary lan-guage. As a result, Strauss argues, he fails to see that Plato’s paradoxical polit-ical philosophy is not based on any ontology or “physiology,” but solely ondialectic.46 The truth it uncovers are the fundamental and perennial problemsthat beget contradictory opinions about the good, the just, and the virtuous.To live in accordance with this truth, to lead a truly virtuous, philosophicallife, is to be guided by these problems as an unchangeable normative order.47


Hence, Plato’s political philosophy differs from that of Hobbes in itsambiguous, paradoxical attitude toward opinion. By way of illustration,Strauss discusses a theme crucial to political philosophy: courage. InHobbesian politics, courage is not regarded as a virtue; rather, it is criti-cized as an illusion jeopardizing human self-preservation. In this way,Hobbes squarely opposed the prevailing opinion of his turbulent time,which valued courage highly. In fact, his new morality was aimed preciselyat removing the grounds of this esteem, in order to secure the stability ofbourgeois existence. Plato, on his part, also develops an incisive critique ofcourage, but in his case this does not lead to a wholesale rejection. Rather,Plato observes the reigning opinion—which views courage or andreia as thecapacity to hold one’s ground—but he remarks that glorification ofcourage in this definition ultimately leads to idealizing the life of the tyrant,who has the power to be fully autonomous.48 From this, he infers that un-derlying courage is actually the natural self-love of man. For this same rea-son, however, courage cannot be the highest virtue for the philosopher,whose love primarily regards the truth. Rather, from the philosophicalpoint of view, the highest virtue is wisdom. In that case, however, the prob-lem arises that wisdom becomes more important than justice, which is thepolitical virtue par excellence. As Strauss argues, Plato solves this difficultyby making a distinction that may sound more or less familiar: “It is notcourage which is the highest virtue—self-mastery stands higher, and higherstill than self-mastery stand wisdom and justice. In itself wisdom standssupreme, but justice stands supreme from an exoteric point of view.”49

Although Strauss does not enlarge on this remark, he continues witha disquisition reminiscent of Philosophy and Law: although the philosopheras such transcends the political realm, as a human being he owes obedienceto the laws of the polis and respect to its opinions. For this reason, Platosubjects the philosopher to the divine law of the best regime, which com-pels him to devote his wisdom to justice and the care of his fellow men. Inthis way, he exoterically preserves the primacy of justice and courage, whileexoterically crowning wisdom as the highest virtue. We should not forget,however, that wisdom is understood here in the Socratic sense, as theawareness of ignorance regarding the good and the just.50 The distinctionbetween an esoteric and an exoteric dimension allows Plato to mediate be-tween the political power of opinion and the philosophic pursuit of thetruth, without detracting from either. In contrast, Hobbes’s radical critiqueof courage starts from a passion that is equally developed in all human be-ings, and ultimately aims at eradicating the difference between esotericismand exotericism.


The only parallel between Hobbes and Plato, Strauss asserts, is that theantithesis between appearance and truth is of fundamental importance forboth. “What Hobbes’s political philosophy owes to Platonism is, therefore, itsantithetic character, the constituent conception of the antithesis betweentruth and appearance, the fitting and the great, in the most extreme formula-tion, between reason and passion.”51 In this way, Strauss rejoins his earlier ar-ticle, where he identified this antithesis as the touchstone of a genuineconfrontation of Hobbes and Plato, allowing a correct assessment of Hobbes’sclaim to a more profound understanding of human nature. Hobbes’s under-standing of this antithesis, Strauss now finds, proves to be based on a completebreak with Plato. The opposition between vanity and fear of violent death isthe basis of an exact political science claiming universal applicability. In orderto substantiate this claim, the place of reason in the original Platonic antithe-sis is now occupied by a passion. Hence, Strauss concludes, the basis ofHobbes’s political philosophy is not the activity of reason, but a dynamic ofopposed passions that is the sole guarantee of universal applicability. Hobbes’sunderstanding of exactitude is diametrically opposed to that of Plato: while forthe latter “exactness means the undistorted reliability of the standards,” forHobbes “exactness means the unconditional applicability, applicability underall circumstances, applicability in the extreme case.”52

Unlike the Platonic standards, the Hobbesian criteria can easily beintegrated in a scientific method, since they are designed from the outsetwith a view to practical application. In this context, Strauss refers toHobbes’s use of Galileo’s “resoluto-compositive” method, the technique ofresolving the studied object—this case the state—into its constituent partsand recomposing it with a view to improving it. The result of Hobbes’sanalysis is the antithesis between vanity and fear of violent death, out ofwhich he subsequently proceeds to construct the improved state, the rightstate. As Strauss points out, however, this implies that there is no longerany need to ask for the “rightness” of the right state: the latter followsspontaneously and obviously from the results of the analysis. Precisely thisassumption reveals Hobbes’s fundamental obliviousness:

The “resoluto-compositive” method thus presupposes nothing lessthan a systematic renunciation of the question of what is good and fit-ting. Convinced of the absolutely typical character of mathematicalmethod, according to which one proceeds from self-evident axioms toevident conclusions, “to the end,” Hobbes fails to realize that in the“beginning,” in the “evident” presuppositions whether of mathemat-ics or of politics, the real problem, the task of “dialectic” is hidden.53


Hobbes’s faith in the resoluto-compositive method is the complementof his nominalist distrust of ordinary language and human reason. Accord-ing to Strauss, this distrust is premature and unjustified: “For to give up ori-entation by speech means giving up the only possible orientation, which isoriginally at the disposal of men, and therewith giving up the discovery ofthe standard which is presupposed in any orientation, and even giving upthe search for the standard.”54 Hobbes attempts to find a standard beyondordinary language, opinion, and reason, by deducing it from the analysis ofthe existing state. However, Strauss argues, the principles that result fromhis analysis—vanity and fear—must already imply a specific answer to thequestion regarding the right state in order to be effective. For the analysis ofthe existing state only reveals its basic principles: it does not say anythingabout the goodness or badness of these principles. This means that Hobbesmust tacitly insert an answer to the question of the right state between hisanalysis and his synthesis. As Strauss points out, Hobbes neither simply pre-supposes nor even posits the fear of violent death as a principle of naturalreason and as the basis of the right of nature, but he actually justifies it,something that would be superfluous if it would follow spontaneously fromthe resoluto-compositive analysis. His failure to clarify the reasons for thisjustification shows that, from the outset, he has relinquished the Socraticquestion and the philosophic search for the standard.55

The absolute individual right posited and justified by Hobbes pre-cedes both reason and society. According to Strauss, this signifies a decisivebreak with the traditional view, which gave primacy to a law that derived itsauthority from its ancestral or divine origin, or, from the point of thephilosophers, from its superior rationality. Reason’s claim to authority andthe classical concept of rationality, however, are firmly rejected by Hobbes.In his view, reason is a product of fear, and since all human beings are dri-ven by fear in equal measure, they are in principle equally rational. More-over, the development of man’s rational capacities can never eradicatedisagreement regarding fundamental matters.56 As a result, Hobbes is thefirst political thinker faced with the problem of sovereignty, Strauss pointsout: if all men are by nature equal, who shall exercise power, under whatconditions and within what limits? Hobbes’s solution to this problem hasbecome familiar, not only to every reader of his great work Leviathan, butin fact to every modern individual: to secure the pursuit of comfortableself-preservation, every individual transfers his power to the sovereign inexchange for the latter’s protection.57 The unrivaled success of Hobbes’sproposal, however, should not make us forget that it is based on a breakwith classical rationalism: it is “the decisive presupposition for the concept


of sovereignty as well as for the supplanting of ‘law’ by ‘right,’ that is, thesupplanting of the primacy of obligation by the primacy of claim.”58

As Strauss explains, the break with classical rationalism is based on therejection of ordinary language as a suitable philosophical point of departure,and this marks the decisive difference between Hobbes and Plato. The lat-ter develops a paradoxical philosophy that acknowledges and preserves theimportance of morality, while critically investigating its origins.59 Hobbes,on the other hand, denies the intrinsic value of man’s natural moral judg-ments and constructs a new morality that clears the path for the conquestof nature: “while Plato goes back to the truth hidden in the natural valua-tions and therefore seeks to teach nothing new and unheard-of, but to recallwhat is known to all but not understood, Hobbes, rejecting the natural val-uations in principle, goes beyond them, goes forward to a new a priori po-litical philosophy, which is of the future and freely projected.”60

Thus, Strauss’s final verdict can be summarized as follows: despite hisundeniable originality and power of thought, Hobbes’s claim to “a more pro-found understanding of human nature” proves to be based on a superficial andprejudiced appreciation of the foundations of classical political philosophy.His break with classical rationalism was only possible because of a failure tounderstand the complexity of its origins. A strong prejudice, partly deter-mined by the Christian-Aristotelian heritage, prevented him from carryinghis inquiry to a more fundamental level, where the question of the right orderof society or of the true state and the question “Why philosophy?” find a com-mon root in the Socratic question.61 Moreover, on the basis of this omissionHobbes constructed a political philosophy that obscured the original Socraticquestion and hid it from view for a long time. Its success reinforced the prej-udice that classical political philosophy was—and is—definitely a thing of thepast. With his critical analysis, Strauss seeks to break the spell of this preju-dice, by confronting Hobbes’s political philosophy with its classical, Socratic-Platonic counterpart, and by showing that the Socratic question has not in theleast been rendered superfluous by Hobbes and his philosophic descendants.62

Fighting the Kingdom of Darkness

Having identified what he views as the errors in the Hobbesian receptionof Platonic politics, Strauss goes on to investigate their roots and causes inHobbes’s Critique of Religion. As the reader of the manuscript will not fail tonotice, in many respects his approach is reminiscent of that of Spinoza’sCritique of Religion. Thus, Strauss begins by firmly rejecting the prevalentnotion that Hobbes’s critique of religion is a by-product or spin-off of


either his philosophy of nature or his political philosophy. On the contrary,it is the basis of both: “the critique of revelation is not simply an ulterior ifnecessary supplement (Ergänzung) of Hobbesian politics, but rather its pre-supposition (Voraussetzung), indeed the presupposition of Hobbes’s philoso-phy as such.”63 By the same token, “Hobbes’s idea of natural science can beunderstood radically only from his critique of miracles. In this sense, at anyrate, the critique of religion is the presupposition of his science.”64

In Hobbes’s view, theological politics, the alliance of ancient politicalthought and revealed religion, was responsible for violent religious wars.Restoring order and peace required a new scientific politics that would rad-ically overcome both ancient political science and revelation and thus solvethe theological-political problem. Not surprisingly, Hobbes’s major works,De Cive and Leviathan, in which this new politics is developed, deal exten-sively with both philosophical and theological issues.

On the same grounds, Strauss questions the view that Hobbes was abelieving Christian. Guided by Lessing and the medieval Jewish and Is-lamic philosophers, he has become more attentive to Hobbes’s own art ofwriting and concealing his subversive views.65 As he explains, Hobbesmakes use of the same twofold strategy as Spinoza: behind the facade of apurist critique of theological tradition on the basis of Scripture, he deploysa covert but fundamental critique of Scripture itself.66 Similarly, in his cri-tique on the basis of Scripture, although he ostensibly submits to the literalmeaning of the biblical text, he interprets it as a human literary documentin order to prove that it does not intend to teach anything regarding theobjects of philosophy or science. According to Hobbes, the traditional dis-tinction between the spiritual and the material realm has no foundationwhatsoever in the biblical teaching, and neither does the dualism of powerthat threatens the unity and stability of the political regime.

Rather, the distinction between spirit and matter is one of manyfraudulent heresies disseminated by what Hobbes calls “the kingdome ofdarknesse,” a “confederacy of deceivers” that comprises the priesthood, butalso Greek poets and philosophers, primarily Aristotle.67 Their metaphys-ical dualism merely justifies the natural human tendency to take figmentsof the imagination as real entities. By the same token, their ethics and pol-itics validate the human passions and thereby vindicate man’s natural dis-obedience with regard to the law, as well as his vanity and pride.68 Thesepernicious and anarchistic doctrines rooted in vanity were subsequentlyadopted and incorporated into the Christian church by the Roman priest-hood, leading to Christianity’s decadence. This does not mean, however,that Hobbes envisages any kind of renascence, Strauss argues:


In truth, Hobbes’s critique of tradition on the basis of Scripture is notguided by the earnest will to find in Scripture the tree of life, the di-vine order of human life, but by the calculated intention to safeguarda view of the human order of human life established independently ofScripture, against objections on the part of the church and theology,by a subsequent appeal to Scripture.69

Thus, the professed purity of Hobbes’s biblical investigations ismerely a fiction, Strauss observes. In fact, his exegesis proves to be based onnonreligious, philosophical presuppositions that, as in the case of Spinoza,are of Epicurean origin. His critique on the basis of Scripture, most notablyhis rejection of the dualism of spirit and matter, is fundamentally animatedby the effort to liberate man from the fear of divine powers and from thefear of death. However, like Spinoza’s liberal interpretation of the Bible,Hobbes’s new politics is called into question by the reality and the possi-bility of miracles, much more so than by the dualism of spirit and matter.For as long as this possibility has not been refuted, prophecy and revelationremain essentially possible. For this reason, his critique must go furtherand attack the fundamental claim to miraculous inspiration underlying theBible itself: “Shaking the authority of Scripture, indeed, the possibility ofrevelation as such, is thus the conditio sine qua non for the definitive safe-guarding, if not for the original possibility of Hobbesian politics.”70

Here again, Hobbes proceeds in a manner that prefigures Spinoza’sapproach in the Theological-Political Treatise. More to the point, the fail-ure of his critique foreshadows the failure of Spinoza’s critique of reli-gion. To begin with, Hobbes develops a historical critique of prophecyaimed at undermining the credibility of Scripture. In doing so, however,he treats the Bible like any other literary document, thus begging thequestion with regard to the interpretation of a believer. The mere fact ofenvisaging a historical critique, Strauss argues, shows that “his unbelief isnot the consequence, but the precondition of the historical critique.”71

Thus, Hobbes must turn from the miracle of prophecy to miracles assuch. On this point, he not only argues that miracles cannot be known bynatural reason, but he sets out to prove that they are, in fact, impossible.In order to do so, however, he must have recourse to the philosophicaldistinction between miraculous or supernatural events and natural events.As Strauss already argued in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, however, thisdistinction is unacceptable to the true believer. Like Spinoza after him,Hobbes cannot refute the possibility of miracles directly, but only indi-rectly, by focusing on its consequences.72 While his argument may have


some effect against Scholasticism, it utterly fails vis-à-vis a radical ortho-dox position like that of Calvin’s.

To avert this threatening result, Strauss argues, Hobbes takes an al-most desperate measure. Bent on refuting the knowability and possibility ofmiracles, he carries the belief in miracles to its most radical consequence: if,as revealed religion claims, creation is dependent on the workings of an in-scrutable and omnipotent creator, it cannot but be altogether unintelligi-ble. In one fell swoop, he rejects both revealed religion and the ancient ideaof nature as an intelligible order, both faith and natural reason. In order toescape from this untenable position, he espouses the view that only what ismade freely and arbitrarily by the human consciousness is intelligible, sincehuman consciousness can withdraw from the reach of both nature andGod. Because only the principles and the content of human knowledge arein the power of consciousness, natural science becomes the entirely hypo-thetical pursuit of the causes of things. This science is as “capable” of ex-plaining nature as it is of explaining miracles, because it holds the things inthemselves to be beyond the power of consciousness. At the same time,however, natural science remains constitutionally incapable of refuting thepossibility of miracles. In order to uphold itself, it must have recourse tothe same Cartesian-Napoleonic stratagem Strauss already brought to lightin Spinoza’s Critique of Religion and Philosophy and Law:

Modern science, which so little excludes the possibility of miracles thatrather the admission of their possibility is its basis, protects itself postfestum (nachträglich) against this possibility by asserting the relativity ofbelief in miracles to the pre-scientific stage of humanity, on the basis ofits characteristic consciousness of being advanced (Fortgeschrittenheits-Bewusstsein), hence on the basis of historical reflection.”73

This, Strauss argues, shows that the basis of Hobbes’s critique of re-ligion is not modern science: on the contrary, the latter merely serves toshore up the indemonstrable assertions of the former regarding the impos-sibility of miracles. These assertions themselves are ultimately based onwhat Strauss calls a “primary skepticism” regarding miracles, which merelyargues that knowledge of miracles is very difficult. This primary skepti-cism, he further observes, historically precedes the new science: it can al-ready be found in the ancient and medieval critics of religion who had anentirely different, premodern concept of science. In Hobbes’s work, as inSpinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, however, it is grafted on Cartesianradical doubt and its “nihilist” retreat to the individual human conscious-ness in the face of the possibility of a deceitful God (deus deceptor).


Nevertheless, although Hobbes considers knowledge of things inthemselves to be impossible, he does not deny their existence. This existence,however, he can only conceive of as corporality: being is for him identical tobeing-corporal, and being-corporal ultimately means being tangible or,more precisely, to offer resistance to human force. The tactile experience ofresistance, Strauss explains, thus becomes the new universal paradigm forhuman knowledge: instead of seeing and understanding, sensing and feelingnow become the source of human certainty about being. The epoch-makingsuccess of this shift, however, does not do away with the fact that the funda-mental identification of being with being-corporal is an unwarranted prej-udice, Strauss argues: “The prejudice that being is being-corporal thusoriginally signifies: being is resistance (Widerständigkeit) and palpability.Thus, for Hobbes, the existence of a resistant world is from the outset and al-ways self-evident.”74 According to Hobbes, man is in the grips of an incom-prehensible world that exists independently and resists his power, a view thatremains essentially beholden to the unrefuted possibility of miracles. Theonly way in which man can hold his own in such a world, the only way inwhich the lingering threat of an intervention by the God of revelation can beaverted, is by withdrawing to the inner world of consciousness with its fig-ments and constructs.75 For lack of an intelligible natural order in whichguidance can be found, man can only orient himself by his own artfulness,“the capacity to produce useful effects on the basis of deliberation.”76

This, Strauss argues, leads us to the core of Hobbes’s critique of reli-gion, and thus to the basis of his philosophical project: “The fact of art (dasFaktum der Kunst) is authoritative (massgebend) for Hobbes’s philosophy.For this philosophy is a philosophy of civilization: by means of the knowl-edge of the conditions of civilization, it wants to contribute to the safe-guarding and furtherance of civilization.”77 Within the confines of theprogressive work of civilization, man can finally confront and avert theclaims of revelation regarding miracles as deceptions that distract and pre-vent him from seeking his own advantage. However, human art in the ser-vice of the pursuit of comfort, security, and happiness is no longer theimitation of nature understood as an intelligible and exemplary order. In-stead, art becomes the sovereign creation of man in opposition to natureunderstood as an incomprehensible chaos. By dint of this momentouschange in the relationship between art and nature, Hobbes can rightly becalled one of the founders of modernity.

The main conditions and implications of Hobbes’s historical projectof civilization are discussed in more detail in The Political Philosophy ofHobbes. In the present inquiry, however, Strauss makes clear that this change


itself is rooted in an immense prejudice that originates in Hobbes’s strenu-ous but purely defensive effort to keep the persistent threat of miraculousdivine intervention at bay. Just as his extreme aversion to theological politicsleads him to a radical critique of the virtue of courage, it causes him to dis-miss the idea of nature as an intelligible order. According to Strauss, how-ever, Hobbes’s wholesale rejection of ancient philosophy and politics isprecipitate, since his polemic against revealed religion prevents him fromseeing and understanding them in their original sense. Thus, his polemicagainst the traditional dualism of power precludes him from addressing amore fundamental question that Strauss calls the “primitive and principaltheme of politics”: “for every discussion about dualism or monism of pow-ers presupposes the clarification of the meaning of ‘power,’ the answer tothe question of the meaning and the purpose of the state.”78

With this remark, Strauss rejoins his most fundamental criticism inThe Political Philosophy of Hobbes: even though he claims to repeat the So-cratic foundation of classical political philosophy, Hobbes fails to properlyraise the Socratic question. As a result, and contrary to his own claim, hisnew political philosophy is, in fact, less original and less radical than theold.79 In addition, Strauss returns to the questions he had raised in the pre-liminary article: “whether the modification, intended by Hobbes and in factdetermined by Christianity, of ancient ideas is actually based on a moreprofound understanding of human nature, and what this concern for ‘pro-fundity’ actually entails.”80 As his inquiry shows, Hobbes’s claim to a moreprofound understanding of human nature is at least questionable, since it isbased rather on his animosity toward revealed religion and theological pol-itics than on a genuine understanding of ancient ideas. As for the concernfor profundity itself, it too proves to be problematic. As Strauss’s formula-tion seems to suggest, it is somehow determined by Christianity. In thedraft of a letter to Gerhard Krüger, he elaborates this view as follows:

Granted the greater profundity of Christian and post-Christian philosophy—is it a matter of depth, then? Is this perspective (of pro-fundity) not itself already a Christian perspective, which is in need ofclarification (Ausweisung)? Is “profundity” identical with radicalism?Isn’t it rather the case that “profundity” is not really radical? . . .Hobbes claims to be more profound than Aristotle (and Plato). Whatis hidden behind this claim? He fails to raise the question regardingthe eidos [idea, shape] (either the question of the essence of aretè[virtue] or the question of the sociability of man), he assumes that thequestion has already been answered and that the answer is “trivial.”81


As Strauss further explains, Christianity claimed to have brought tolight certain facts about man that the ancients failed to recognize. In par-ticular, their view of human nature and of the soul was judged to be super-ficial and incomplete, since it ignored or underrated crucial strata such asconscience and temporality. When the founders of modernity turnedagainst revealed religion in order to reinstate philosophy, they did not raisethe question whether this “deepening” was indeed justified.82 Instead, it be-came the implicit framework of their revolutionary endeavor, as becomesapparent from Hobbes’s turn to history, as well as from certain of his an-thropological and ontological presuppositions. Spellbound by the premisesof revealed religion and captivated by their polemic against the scholasticphilosophic tradition, they failed to restore philosophy in its original sense,but instead launched a historical project.

In fact, Strauss argues, the “deepening” claimed by Christianity evencontinues to determine late modern philosophy. As we saw in chapter 3, hefinds that the radical historicism and the intellectual probity professed byNietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger remain decisively indebted to Christianmorality. These three thinkers bring to completion the process that beginsin the thought of Hobbes: modern philosophy’s construction of a secondcave underneath the Platonic cave. Designed as an artificial shelter fromthe threat of revealed religion, this second cave has become the place inwhich modern man has almost forgotten, if not denied, the existence of thefirst, original cave. In his various writings on Hobbes, Strauss attemptsboth to understand how the second cave came into being and to find a wayback to the first, to the position from which Socrates raised the question ofthe right way of life. By the same token, he tries to detach himself from themodern concern for profundity and intellectual probity and to recover theSocratic love of truth.

Before concluding this chapter, a curious though important detailmust be mentioned. Although numerous elements leave no doubt that ThePolitical Philosophy of Hobbes is part of his attempt to recover the Socraticquestion, Strauss almost never mentions Socrates by name in the book.83

Only in the final chapter, when explaining how Plato “takes refuge” in di-alectics instead of ontology, he adds that this turn is an essential character-istic of “the tradition founded by Socrates-Plato, for the Socratic-Platonicreform of philosophy rests precisely on the perception of the unreliabilityand contradictoriness of ordinary speech.”84 It is not clear why the pres-ence of Socrates, which is clearly crucial to the intention of the book, islimited to a discreet adjective. That it is indeed crucial is intimated in the


autobiographical preface to the German edition of the book, where Straussemphasizes that he “did not write about Hobbes as a Hobbesian.”85 By wayof an explanation, he refers the reader to the words of his contemporaryGerhard Krüger, yet without quoting them explicitly: “That the decisivequestion remains true, even if it finds no answer, this he who questions thuscan learn from the example of Socrates.”86 The bearing of this quote is clear:Strauss would only have been able to write about Hobbes as a Hobbesian ifhe had shared Hobbes’s understanding of and answer to the decisive ques-tion. From this he was prevented by the example of Socrates, for whom thequestion of the right life always held more attraction than the answers thatare given to it.

As became already apparent, the conspicuous absence of Socrates isnot only characteristic of the Hobbes book: in the review of Schmitt’s TheConcept of the Political, as in Philosophy and Law, the teacher disappears be-hind the pupil, Plato, even though in the decisive respect there is no dif-ference between them. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Straussjudged it necessary to conceal the focal point of his endeavor in his earlywork. Perhaps he estimated that a straightforward presentation would onlybe received with skepticism and even opprobrium in an academic worlddominated by the philological-historical approach to philosophy. Perhapshe was guided by considerations similar to those of Plato and the falasifawith regard to the importance of caution and moderation in philosophy’srelationship to the polis. However this may be, in his early works Straussdonned the garb of the historian of philosophy or the historian of ideas,who indulges in detailed and painstaking scholarly research. However, heleft no doubt that this was in part a necessary camouflage, as may be in-ferred from a footnote in Philosophy and Law:

To that end and only to that end is the “historicization” of philoso-phy justified and necessary: only the history of philosophy makes pos-sible the ascent from the second, “unnatural” cave into which we havefallen less because of the tradition itself than because of the traditionof polemics against the tradition, into that first, “natural” cave whichPlato’s image depicts, to emerge from which into the light is the orig-inal meaning of philosophizing.87


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CHAPTER 6

Epilogue

The Surface and the Core

At the moment when Strauss uncovers what he regards as the rationalitydeficit in Hobbes’s foundation of liberalism, that same liberalism is all butdefunct in Germany. In 1936, when the Hobbes book is published, Hitler’sNational Socialist Party wins the Reichstag elections with a 99 percentlandslide, the Nuremberg racial laws are coming into full effect, and every-thing that smacks of Zivilisation is denounced in the name of Kultur. Theprecarious and much-afflicted liberal democracy of the Weimar Republicis no more than a distant recollection. Strauss, living and working in En-gland with his family, is unable to return, while his professional and finan-cial situation is becoming increasingly difficult.1 Fortunately, the fact thathe failed to find a publisher for the German Hobbes manuscript and wasforced to publish it in English now proves to be advantageous. The bookis well received in the English-speaking academic world on both sides ofthe Atlantic, and turns out to be a bridgehead. Partly by its strengths,Strauss is able to obtain a position in the United States, where he will re-main for the rest of his career.2

With the passage to America, we enter the domain of the more “famil-iar” Strauss, who founded a school and aroused controversy. The change ofcontinents, however, does not mean a change of intellectual pursuits. Straussscrupulously continues his research on the two paths he has set out: the recovery of the Socratic question by studying premodern philosophy, and thecritical investigation of modern philosophy by reopening the quarrel betweenthe ancients and the moderns. At the same time, the theological-politicalproblem remains the juncture of these two paths: religion and politics are the two fundamental challenges to which philosophy, both ancient and modern, must respond. On both paths, Strauss abides more than ever by his

characteristic approach of “learning through reading.” Clearly, the initial attempt to understand authors as they understood themselves and in theirown terms has gathered additional momentum by the discovery of the art ofveiled and veiling writing of Plato and his Jewish, Islamic (and German) stu-dents. It underscores the necessity of reading their works with the utmostcare, impartiality, and hermeneutic openness, and with special attention totheir formal—stylistic, rhetoric, and dramatic—characteristics. However, thisrequirement not only applies to the interpretation of Plato and the falasifa: instudying the works of other premodern authors, Strauss finds indications thatthey likewise concealed their intentions with the aid of literary techniques anddevices.3 In their case as well, this procedure is inspired by the tension be-tween the philosophic pursuit of knowledge and the political community. Inthis respect, their writings can be regarded as political philosophy, in the dou-ble sense of the term.

As Strauss comes to attach more importance to this connection, theperspective of his research gradually changes, a process Heinrich Meier hasaptly described as “the movement from the history of philosophy to the in-tention of the philosopher.”4 Instead of interpreting a text as a product ofits historical context and its author as a child of his time, Strauss endeavorsto detect to what extent the author detaches himself from his historicalcontext and thus is a stepchild of his time. As Meier further points out, thediscovery of the philosophers’ art of writing arouses the suspicion that thehistory of philosophy as it was written since the nineteenth century islargely a fable convenue, a likely story: the most salient features of a pre-modern philosophic text, those privileged by the conventional historicalapproach, may in fact be part of its outer meaning, the exoteric casing withwhich the author adapted his mode of expression to the prevailing views ofhis time.5 In order to grasp the author’s guiding intention, one first has todecipher this casing, for the art of writing only becomes visible to thosewho have mastered the art of reading.

The result of Strauss’s studies is a large number of commentaries ofvarying length on numerous classic philosophic texts, in which he investi-gates how their authors responded to the theological-political problem. Toprovide a summary or even an overview of these interpretations is impossi-ble, if only because of the wide range they cover, but also for more intrinsicreasons. In each of his interpretations, Strauss emphasizes that he can onlyindicate the first steps on the way to an adequate interpretation. A classic text,which has been composed and polished with exceeding care over a long pe-riod of time, only yields its full meaning to a sustained and protracted studythat may take years, perhaps a lifetime. A careful author, it must be assumed,


knew exactly what he was doing and left nothing to chance in the process ofwriting: every formal and substantial element, every detail was selected withdeliberation and presented with precision, and thus merits the interpreter’sfull attention. For the art of writing owes its effectiveness not only to thecompetence of the author, but also to the fact that not all readers are equallythoughtful, perspicacious, patient, and leisured.

Precisely for this reason, it is of crucial importance to make the rightbeginning in interpreting a philosophic text. As Strauss is well aware, atfirst view there is no essential difference between inner and outer meaning:both are part of one and the same text.6 Whoever wishes to fathom thedeeper meaning cannot avoid starting from the surface of the text as it pre-sents itself. To speculate in advance as to an inner meaning is the surestpath to failure, Strauss warns. Such assumptions may lead the reader tooverlook certain aspects and details, so that from the outset he puts himselfon the wrong track. “There is no surer protection against the understand-ing of anything than taking for granted or otherwise despising the obviousand the surface. The problem inherent in the surface of things, and onlythe surface of things, is the heart of things.”7 In other words, the only wayto discover what is behind the mask is to study closely the mask, and noth-ing but the mask.

Obviously, this is no easy task. The art of writing has no standard in-struments or fixed rules. It is a subtle and flexible means of communicationthat at once imitates and deflects the prevailing modes in order to conveya paradoxical insight.8 How an author proceeded in writing a text dependson his assessment of the theological-political problem, and can only begleaned from the indications he supplies in the text. On this point, the pos-sibilities are well nigh infinite. Thus, the content of utterances, assertions,and propositions may be dependent on their function and place within thetext as a whole. In support, Strauss concurs with Lessing’s remark that “thesame thought in a different place may have an entirely different value.”9

Thus, apparent repetitions may indicate that what has been repeated hasacquired a different meaning. Moreover, the connection between largerwholes may also be important: the seemingly arbitrary composition of atext—its divisions into books, chapters, paragraphs, and sections—mayconceal a well-ordered plan obliquely alluded to by the author.10 Contra-dictions or grave errors in the text are not necessarily due to carelessness orneglect, but may have been inserted deliberately. A contradiction may evenbe hidden, for example, in the contradictory implications of two utterancesthat as such are not opposed.11 In addition, we should not forget that acareful writer is eo ipse a careful reader. References to and quotations from

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the work of other authors may contain meaningful clues, particularly whenthey are incorrect or incomplete. Last but not least, the art of writing is theart of silence and omission: what an author does not say, especially whenthe reader is justified in expecting him to do so, may be as important aswhat he does say. In such cases, the reader must independently supplementwhat is unsaid or omitted. However, the reverse may also be possible. Anauthor reputed for his ambiguous or obscure manner of expression mayunexpectedly exhibit unusual frankness. Only a patient reader will resist thetemptation not to take such utterances seriously.12

There is another reason why Strauss’s commentaries resist reviewand summary. If, as he ventures to impress on his readers, a careful writeris by necessity a careful reader and vice versa, his own writings can be noexception. Alfarabi, who succeeded in decoding the clues in Plato’s writingsas well as their underlying rationale, thereby understood the necessity tocommunicate his discoveries in a similarly covert manner, albeit with theaid of different clues adapted to his surroundings. For this reason, he pre-sented his insights in the guise of seemingly dry and tedious commentarieswithout a clear system and written in an erratic style, alternatingly conciseand long-winded. In this way, he succeeded in only drawing the attentionof diligent, philosophically minded readers, using his own covert clues toguide them to those of Plato.13

Strauss, who succeeded in decoding Alfarabi’s pointers, follows suit.As his studies of other authors make him more familiar with their respectivearts of writing, he begins to develop one of his own.14 In doing so, he isguided by considerations similar to those of his medieval exemplars: theonly way to draw the reader’s attention to a specific author’s art of writing isby means of an art of writing. Thus, initially he presents his interpretationsin the garb of solid, scholarly, and detailed historical studies, as a result ofwhich he is often mistaken for a historian of ideas. That this impression isindeed misleading is borne out by a telling remark of Strauss’s about Al-farabi: “Fârâbî avails himself then of the specific immunity of the commen-tator or of the historian in order to speak his mind concerning grave mattersin his ‘historical’ works, rather than in the works in which he speaks in hisown name.”15 What one writer says about another may be an important clueto how he wishes to be read. Thus, it is no coincidence that Strauss rarelyspeaks in his own name in his “historical works.”16 In fact, he eventually dis-cards the guise of the historian altogether. From the second half of the1950s on, his interpretations increasingly come to resemble paraphrases ofthe texts under scrutiny, to the incomprehension and even disapproval of ahost of contemporary critics.


Whoever opens Strauss’s later works is thus compelled to proceedwith caution. Like Alfarabi, he brings to light the problems inherent in thesurface of the text under scrutiny only by covering it with the surface of hisown commentaries. In other words, unveiling takes place by means of anew veiling. This does not mean, however, that his writings are entirely in-accessible or hopelessly idiosyncratic. In most cases, even a first superficialreading yields enlightening and intriguing insights that challenge the pre-vailing interpretations and raise disturbing questions. Since they defy sum-mary or review, I will limit myself to discussing a few of the most salientand controversial aspects of Strauss’s most important works. In doing so, Iwill attempt to situate these aspects as much as possible against the back-ground of his philosophical project as a whole. It goes without saying thatthis procedure cannot in any way pretend to be a valid substitute for read-ing the commentaries themselves, let alone the original works commented.

The Problem of Socrates

As said, Strauss’s investigations remain focused throughout in the recovery ofthe Socratic question. Already at the beginning of the 1930s, he indicates thata thorough rereading of Plato is necessary to this end. In this respect, it is allthe more remarkable that, in his publications, he commences his study of“the problem of Socrates” not with Plato, but with Xenophon, the only otherpupil of Socrates whose writings are extant. Since the nineteenth century, theheyday of classical philology, Xenophon’s reputation is mostly that of a his-torian, most notably as the author of the Anabasis, an account of a military ex-pedition in which he took part. The philosophical works he wrote, most ofwhich are dedicated to Socrates, are hardly, if at all, taken seriously. This re-ception has obscured the fact that up until the nineteenth century Xenophonwas regarded as a philosophical author on a par with Plato.

The rehabilitation of Xenophon is perhaps one of Strauss’s most important accomplishments. In his interpretations, this allegedly “feeble-minded” pupil of Socrates appears as a political philosopher and writer of thefirst rank who introduces his diligent readers to the Socratic program bymeans of superior irony. As Strauss shows, all of Xenophon’s writings areparts of a tightly composed Gesamtwerk of which Socrates is the focal point:not only in the so-called Socratic writings, the Memorabilia, the Apology, theSymposium, and the Oeconomicus, but also in his so-called historical works suchas the Anabasis, the Hellenica, and the Cyropaedia, and even in the scripta minora, the minor writings such as the Agesilaus and the Hiero. In its own way,Strauss argues, each of these works explores the theological-political problem,

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the tension between the philosophic life and the theological-political author-ity of the city, as the fundamental problem of philosophy. At the beginningof the 1950s, Strauss’s interpretation of Xenophon’s Hiero sparks a bril-liant polemic with his colleague and friend Alexandre Kojève, an eccentric Marxist-Hegelian whose lectures on Hegel were of momentous influence ona whole generation of French thinkers. Against Strauss’s classical understand-ing of the relationship between philosophy and politics, Kojève defends themodern view, so that the debate becomes a contemporary installment of thequerelle des anciens et des modernes.17

Only when he has become acquainted with the deceptive sobriety ofXenophon’s art of writing does Strauss venture to address the more exuber-ant and versatile ambiguity of Socrates’s most beloved student. Here again,his interpretations stray far from the beaten path. They resolutely dismissthe deeply ingrained contemporary dogma that Plato betrayed his teacher’scritical and liberating inquiry by turning it into a conservative, even author-itarian, dogmatic system.18 Rejecting this view, Strauss persists with hisoriginal view that philosophically there is no difference between pupil andteacher on the essential point: Plato carries out the Socratic program. Thedialogues, Strauss argues, do not transmit any doctrine or system. Rather,they offer an intricate literary presentation of what Socrates stood for: a lifein the service of questioning.19 Far from reflecting a certain stage in Plato’sdevelopment, each dialogue throws light on a specific aspect of the Socraticquestion, in such a way that the various dialogues supplement each other. Atthe same time, however, the dialogues are more than a representation of thephilosophic life: they incite the reader to ask questions in order to indepen-dently reconstruct and articulate the whole.20 Their mutual connection re-sembles that of shattered “hologram” (literally, a “writing of the whole”).Each dialogue is, as it were, a shard in which the whole is reflected, albeit in-directly and incompletely. Only by recomposing the shards does the imagebecome visible in its entirety.

Like all of his interpretations, Strauss’s reading of the Platonic dialoguesbegins with the surface. In this case, this means that their formal, literary char-acteristics are at least as important as their putative “doctrinal” content. As hisinterpretations show, Plato is an extremely skillful writer who literally leavesnothing to coincidence in his work: “Nothing is accidental in a Platonic dia-logue; everything is necessary at the place where it occurs. Everything whichwould be accidental outside of the dialogue becomes meaningful within thedialogue.”21 In other words, the dialogues are governed by the author’s inten-tion down to their minutest details, just as the biblical universe is governed by a divine providence without which not even a sparrow shall fall on the


ground.22 In trying to understand them, we should keep in mind that, as acontemporary author has his protagonist assert, “a man of genius makes nomistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”23

For the reader, it is therefore necessary to study the choices and selections as well as the omissions that produced the surface of the dia-logues, since they are the only guideposts to Plato’s intention. Thus, it isnecessary to begin by pondering various patent characteristics: the differ-ence between the dialogues’ titles, their formal setting—are they narratedor performed?—as well as the presence or absence of certain dramatis per-sonae, not least of all Socrates.24 By a careful study of these characteristicsand details, Strauss argues, the reader discovers a complex network of con-nections between the dialogues that only gradually becomes apparent, ashis attention turns from the most visible problems on the surface to less vis-ible and eventually to implicit problems. Thus, a comparison of their titlesalready supplies certain clues, as does the difference between narrated andperformed dialogues. Last but not least, the role of Socrates should bestudied carefully: in some dialogues he clearly dominates the conversation,in others he merely participates, while in one dialogue, the Laws, he is com-pletely absent. In Strauss’s reading, all these details are the result of scrupu-lous selection, the rationale of which only becomes apparent in the courseof repeated watchful reading.

The most salient aspect of Plato’s dialogues is perhaps their dramaticcharacter. Even the narrated dialogues are first and foremost a drama, a com-bination of logoi kai erga, speeches and deeds performed by certain personswith regard to each other, within a certain period of time and in one or morespecific places. According to Strauss, it is no accident that Plato stages anddramatizes philosophy. For what medium is better suited to present the political dimension of Socratic questioning than the dramatic art? The dia-logues are performances where what is said and done must always be consid-ered in the light of who says or does it, to whom, about what, when, where,and in what circumstances. Whoever wishes to understand the meaning of adialogue must therefore take into account each of these elements.

An important implication of this approach is that nothing of what issaid in the dialogues may simply be regarded as a reflection of Plato’s view.When discussing modern literature, no one will contend that the views ofthe character in a novel or a play are the straightforward expression of theauthor’s opinion. Strangely enough, such caution is lacking in the case ofPlato, a master playwright who remains conspicuously absent in his plays.25

It seems to be a typically modern conceit that Plato shared the many viewsand arguments presented by his Socrates or by any other of his characters.

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Moreover, as Strauss remarks, even if one were justified in taking Socratesto be Plato’s spokesman, this would be to little avail: “it is one of Socrates’speculiarities that he was a master of irony. We are back where we started:to speak through the mouth of a man who is notorious for his irony seemsto be tantamount to not asserting anything.”26 As in the case of all greatwriters, Plato’s intentions must therefore be sought and found between thelines or in the interaction of speeches and deeds, in the vicissitudes of thecharacters, and in the composition of the dialogues, and also in what re-mains unspoken and unperformed.27 For if nothing is accidental in a Pla-tonic dialogue, neither is silence.

According to Strauss, this latter point becomes apparent in the over-all composition of the dialogues. If each dialogue makes visible a part of thewhole, it does so in a partial manner, since Plato deliberately left out some-thing that is of vital importance for the theme. “Each dialogue, we ventureto say, abstracts from something that is most important to the subject mat-ter of the dialogue.”28 In this way, Plato engages in ironic play with his owndesign, indicating to the reader that an adequate understanding of the sub-ject depends on whether he succeeds in discovering the fundamental ab-straction and supplementing its implicit consequences, not least bystudying the other dialogues. To provide some illustration of how an in-terpretation according to these “principles” proceeds, it is useful to turn toStrauss’s reading of one of Plato’s most political works, the Republic.

The theme of this dialogue is as famous as the way in which it is pre-sented. With his young interlocutors, Socrates tries to answer the question:what is justice? Initially, they look for justice in the individual, but in the in-terest of the inquiry Socrates proposes to focus on the city, since justice“would be easier to observe closely” on this level.29 In the ensuing discussion,the best city is conceived “in speech,” a procedure that takes up almost thewhole remainder of the dialogue.30 In this best city governed by philosophers,a host of political distinctions generally deemed essential is obliterated: differ-ences between the sexes, but also the boundary between the public and theprivate, as property goods, spouses, and children are held in common.

On closer inspection, the predominance of philosophy and the disap-pearance of social and political differences are connected in a way that ischaracteristic of the Republic, Strauss argues. This is already the case at thebeginning of the dialogue, when Socrates enters the house of Polemarchusand meets the latter’s father, Cephalus. The old man introduces the maintheme of the dialogue by providing a definition of justice in passing. Jus-tice, Cephalus suggests, is speaking the truth and giving back what one hasborrowed. In reply, Socrates observes that in some cases it is not advisable


to speak the truth or to render what has been borrowed, for example, whenthe owner of a weapon one has borrowed has in the meantime lost hismind.31 Justice regarding the distribution and the possession of property,he implies, is a matter of knowledge of what is suitable for different people,of their needs and competences. As Strauss indicates, this reasoning, car-ried to its ultimate consequences, already points toward the abolition ofprivate property and of the private sphere as such: an extreme communismruled by “knowers,” or a philosophic regime.

Of course, Strauss is well aware that this argument abstracts from anumber of important elements.32 However, he shows that in the continua-tion of the dialogue this abstraction gradually emerges as a Leitmotiv in theRepublic. This is already the case in the debate between Socrates and theseemingly volatile rhetorician Thrasymachus who argues that justice is noth-ing but the interest of the stronger. As Socrates rejoins, even the strongestcan make mistakes and thus unwittingly serve the interest of the weaker. In this way, Thrasymachus is forced to revise his thesis: the strongest are in-fallible since they possess knowledge, like the artisans and the wise. Whilejustice is once again related to knowledge, Socrates avails himself of Thrasy-machus’s elucidation to tackle him, by pointing out that the good craftsmanalways looks to the interests of others. This shift in the definition of justice,from knowledge to art (technè) puts its mark on the whole discussion. Grad-ually, the image develops of a just city composed entirely of “technicians”who practice their own art with devotion and diligence: from the farmers andlaborers to the guardians and the philosopher-kings. Since membership ofthis city consists exclusively in the practicing of an art, and since the capacityto do so is located in the soul, it is hardly surprising that the difference be-tween the sexes disappears, Strauss observes. Thus, Socrates argues thatwomen are by nature as capable as men of taking care of the surveillance anddefense of the best city. For this reason, they must receive the same educa-tion, including physical training.33

According to Strauss, this argument tells us something more aboutthe characteristic abstraction of the Republic: in various ways, the dialoguesystematically abstracts from the body. Initially, the needs of the body arethe prime reason for a city’s existence: human beings are unable to fulfillthem independently and are thus compelled to live together. At the sametime, the needs of the body individuate: within society they distinguishpeople, and their recognition and fulfillment requires the creation of a pri-vate sphere distinguished and screened from the public sphere. In this way,the body determines the basic political distinctions, and these are system-atically ignored in the construction in speech of the best city, which focuses

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on the soul. At the beginning of the Republic, when Socrates shifts the inquiry from the individual to the city, he does so at the urging of Glaucon,who demands that he demonstrate that justice is preferable for its own sake.In order to meet this demand, Socrates draws an implicit parallelism be-tween the city and the individual, in particular between the city and thesoul. In this parallelism, which becomes the basis for the construction of thebest city, the body is left out of consideration. As Strauss observes, this par-ticularity is reflected in the dramatic setting: Polemarchus entices Socratesto come to his house with the promise of a meal and a nightly spectacle.This promise is not kept: Socrates gets to spend the night in a long discus-sion where the only nourishment taken is “soul food.” Thus, in the actionof the dialogue as well, the body and its needs are suppressed.34

Behind the abstraction from the body, however, lies another abstrac-tion. Within the city, the bodily needs also play an integrating role in theform of desire or eros: as the love of the other sex, as the love of one’s kin orfriends, as the love of one’s property, and the love of one’s country. Gener-ally speaking, the fundamental significance of bodily eros consists in thelove of one’s own. Thus, the abstraction from the body that underlies theconstruction of the best city, modeled on the soul and guided by knowl-edge, is ultimately an abstraction from eros. In the Republic love in its vari-ous forms—from sexuality to familial ties to the pursuit of property—issubjected to the strictest political control. The underlying negative valua-tion becomes most explicit near the end of the dialogue, when Socratesconnects eros to tyranny, presenting the tyrant as eros incarnate.35 Com-pletely dominated by his private bodily desires, the tyrant puts the publicsphere at the service of his personal gratification.

The Republic, in fact, reverses this movement, insofar as it sacrificesall private ties to the public interest. Insofar as the abstraction from eros re-quires the disciplining of bodily needs and of the love of one’s own, it de-mands the destruction of all existing social structures: the abolition of theprivate sphere and thus the collective care for wives, children, and propertyas well as the strict regulation of sexual relationships and the expulsion ofthe poets who praise eros. In other words, Strauss argues, the constructionof the most just and most natural city is seen to require a number of mostunjust and unnatural political measures.36 The most notable of these is theso-called noble lie Socrates introduces with a view to maximizing cohesionin the best city: thus, the true city, in fact, proves to be based on a funda-mental untruth.37

However, the fundamental abstraction regards eros not only as bod-ily desire, but also as psychological desire, the highest form of which is phi-


losophy. Socrates’s hypothetical parallelism between the city and the soul,which underlies the abstraction from the body and from eros, is also thebasis for his well-known tripartite division of the city: the three parts of thesoul—eros (desire), thumos (spiritedness), and logos (reason)—correspond tothe class of farmers and craftsmen, the warrior class, and the class ofphilosopher-rulers, respectively. Remarkably enough, Socrates places thu-mos above eros, as an ally of logos. Philosophic eros, which surpasses thumosas a true ally of logos, is thus completely left out of consideration.38 In thebest city, both eros of the body and eros of the soul are curbed and demotedby the promotion of thumos, the quintessentially political part of the soul.39

As a result, Strauss submits, philosophy as a spontaneous and free activity disappears from the Republic as a whole. Its central thesis that jus-tice can only be realized when philosophers become kings—when philoso-phy and political power coincide—implies that philosophy is introduced asa means to an end, instead of as an end in itself.40 Thus, Socrates repeatedlysuggests that philosophers must be forced to take charge of ruling the bestcity, since they cannot be persuaded to do so. Preoccupied by their eroticdesire for knowledge, they regard political matters as a bothersome dis-traction.41 Similarly, Strauss points to a feature of the Republic that is sel-dom noticed: the philosopher’s ascent from the cave toward the light ischaracterized by compulsion throughout.42 Finally, it should not be for-gotten that the whole discussion of the Republic finds its origin in an act ofcompulsion: Socrates is forced to join Polemarchus under the threat ofphysical coercion.43

Does this mean that we must interpret the Republic as a plea for thepolitical subjugation of eros? On the contrary, Strauss asserts: since nothingis accidental in a Platonic dialogue, the abstraction from eros and the bodyare a deliberate ploy on Plato’s part. It aims to show that the best city ruledby philosophers is an impossible construct because it negates the specificityboth of the city and of philosophy. In Strauss’s reading, the Republic is thusthe exact opposite of what many contemporary interpreters hold it to be.Instead of a totalitarian political blueprint, it is an ironic and incisive cri-tique of every attempt to re-create politics in the image of philosophy: “theRepublic conveys the broadest and deepest analysis of political idealism evermade.”44 The staged attempt to make the city just by reorganizing it in ac-cordance with the correct order of the soul only serves to bring out the dif-ferences between the two as regards their fundamental needs, desires andends. Moreover, at the end of the dialogue, Socrates bluntly remarks to hisinterlocutors that they have not yet investigated the true nature of the soul.In order to do this, he adds, it must first be “seen such as it is in truth, not

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maimed by community with body and other evils, as we now see it. Butwhat it is like when it has become pure must be examined sufficiently bycalculation.”45 In this way, Socrates calls into question the initial paral-lelism between the soul and the city and thus pulls the rug out from underhis own construction. Moreover, he points the reader back to the initialquestion: what is justice? Instead of revealing the “true nature” or the“idea” of justice, the Republic seems only to present a fundamental problem.

In fact, Strauss argues, there is no difference: the dialogue is nothingother than an intricate literary articulation of the paradoxical character ofthe Socratic question of the good life.46 True and perfect justice, as soughtfor in the best city, proves to be realized only in the philosopher for whomthe pursuit of the well-ordered soul is his life’s work.47 However, the jus-tice of the philosopher is at odds with that of the city. It is identical to hisquestioning in pursuit of knowledge, which not only queries itself but alsothe foundations of the city. The philosophic quest for truth and justice ispermanently at odds with the city, which even in its best form is still de-pendent on unjust policies and noble lies. The Republic, Strauss concludeswith Cicero, does not provide a model for political action; rather, it bringsto light the limits of politics, the ratio rerum civilium or “the nature of po-litical things.”48 Plato hides the insuperable tension between philosophyand politics by means of the abstraction from eros, in order to the make theattentive reader aware of it. Moreover, he intimates that philosophy canmitigate the risks that accompany this tension only through the use ofnoble lies. When, near the middle of the dialogue, Socrates announces thathe and the rhetorician Thrasymachus have “just become friends, thoughwe weren’t even enemies before,” he implies that philosophy needsrhetoric in its dealings with the city.49 As Strauss does not fail to point out,Alfarabi already suggested that Plato’s writings are the result of a combina-tion of “the way of Socrates” and “the way of Thrasymachus.”50

Plato chose a most political art in order to transmit the Socratic pro-gram to later generations. Moreover, he also offers the reader valuableclues as to its origins. In the Phaedo, which is set on the eve of his execution,Socrates points to an important turning point in his life as a philosopher. Inhis youth, he tells his companions, he conducted his investigations after themanner of the philosophers of nature: he studied the heavens and earth,trying to discover the first principles of nature. Eventually, he concludedthat this direct approach to the beings led to a dead end. Abandoning thepre-Socratic method, he embarked on a “second sailing” in which he “tookrefuge in speeches in order to see the truth of the beings.”51 In this way, hisinquiry shifted from what is proton kata phusin—first by nature—to what is


proton pros hèmas—first for us. In other words, his quest became “political”in the sense outlined earlier: he focused on the opinions of his fellow citi-zens regarding the good, the just, the noble, and the beautiful.52 Underly-ing the Socratic turn to speeches was the view that every opinion containsa partial and imperfect reflection of the truth, which can only be made vis-ible by means of dialectic.53

This does not mean, however, that Socrates abandoned the funda-mental distinction between phusis (nature) and nomos (convention) that iscoeval with philosophy. Rather, he made the awareness of its political im-plications a primary philosophical concern. By dint of its quest for phusis asthat which is reducible neither to human artifice nor to divine power, phi-losophy necessarily transgresses and corrodes the foundations of the reli-gious and political community. For this reason, it is at once in need ofjustification and open to suspicion. As a quest for self-knowledge, philoso-phy must therefore take both of these issues seriously and become politicalphilosophy for two reasons. First, the various opinions about the good, thejust, and the noble are its necessary starting point, for “political philosophyis the part of philosophy in which the whole of philosophy is in question.”54

Second, it must defend and justify itself vis-à-vis the religious and politicalcommunity by means of a rhetoric that emulates the latter’s priorities.

According to Strauss, this is not the whole story of the second sailing.Regarding the “pre-Socratic” Socrates, none of his pupils who left writingsoffer much clarity. There is, however, another ancient source that may pro-vide a clue, even if it is a comedy. In Aristophanes’s Clouds, we find a portraitof Socrates that differs strikingly from its Platonic and Xenophontic coun-terparts. In the Clouds, Socrates displays a complete lack of interest inhuman matters: he does not care about religion and politics, is completelyinsensitive to bodily comforts or discomforts, and is only concerned withwhat happens above and below the earth. This indifference, moreover, is ac-companied by a total lack of caution and prudence: Socrates is prepared toshare his outrageous and blasphemous views with anyone. These shortcom-ings eventually lead to his demise: having persuaded one of his pupils thatsuperiority of knowledge may justify beating one’s father, at the end of theplay his dwelling is burned down by the pupil’s incensed father.

In the light of Socrates’s execution, this criticism is sufficiently impor-tant for Strauss to pay attention to Aristophanes. In a detailed study of thelatter’s works, he shows that the paragon of Old Comedy mastered the artof writing like his philosophic contemporaries, and that his comedies con-stitute a hologram in their own right, based on a keen understanding ofman’s place in the cosmos.55 In Aristophanean ridicule, all comic elements

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refer to serious equivalents in human reality, and so do Socrates’s vicissi-tudes in the Clouds. According to Strauss, the comedy was intended as afriendly warning to Socrates who, it should not be forgotten, was a memberof the audience when it was performed. Aristophanes wanted to make thephilosopher aware of the danger he was courting: as a result of his completelack of interest in human affairs such as politics, religion, love, and art, hisincessant philosophic probing risked provoking the anger of the city. How-ever, although the wise poet was sympathetic to the thick-skinned philoso-pher, he also failed to fully fathom the strange attraction exercised bySocrates. Thus, in the Clouds, no conversation between Socrates and hispupils is staged, and the successful philosophic initiation of a young mantakes place behind closed doors.56 Nevertheless, Aristophanes does suggesta solution to the problem he raises in Clouds. He appears himself as one ofthe Clouds for whom Socrates acts as a representative: philosophy, he indi-cates, can only endure in the city if it becomes subservient to poetry.

Aristophanes’s challenge, Strauss suggests, was met by Xenophon andPlato. Their Socrates is versed in human affairs like no other: he is politi-cally knowledgeable, a model of piety, an expert in the erotic things and aconnoisseur of the arts. More importantly, he is a master of eironeia or dis-simulation, and exceedingly cautious in communicating his views: his par-ticular wisdom is always coupled with sophrosunè, self-knowledge andmoderation. At the same time, through the irony and ambiguity of theirown presentation, Xenophon and Plato acknowledge that Aristophanes’swarning was not unjustified: philosophic questioning is indeed corrosive ofthe theological-political-legal order and may cause sons to revolt againsttheir fathers.57 By their own works, they show not only that they haveheeded the warning, but also that philosophy is, in fact, able to outdo poetryon its own territory.58

Thus, Strauss points out, it is no accident that the introduction ofcommunism in the Republic contains a host of allusions to Aristophanes’s Assembly of Women, a comedy in which a similar political reform is staged.59

Nor is it accidental that the blind spot of Clouds, Socrates’s erotic attraction,is central in a dialogue where Aristophanes is twice prevented from speak-ing. In the Symposium, Plato subtly turns the tables on the poet, just as thePlatonic “hologram” argues the superiority of philosophy over poetry.60

When, in the Republic, Socrates alludes to “an old quarrel between philoso-phy and poetry,” he concludes a long and well-known discussion in whichpoetry is criticized as an imitation of an imitation of reality and as a dis-turber of the soul’s balance, and in which the poets are expelled from thebest city, only to be readmitted when they submit to the authority of the


philosopher-king.61 This passage, which continues to be a stumbling blockfor those impervious to its subtle comedy, conveys what in fact happens in the Platonic dialogues: poetry is put in the service of philosophy. AsStrauss’s interpretation suggests, Aristophanes’s friendly warning may alsohave played a role in Socrates’s second sailing: his taking refuge in speechesas the sole access to the beings cannot be separated from his becomingaware of the importance of human affairs. Sharing this awareness, his twomost famous pupils provided philosophy with the means to respond ade-quately to the challenge of politics and religion.

The intriguing wealth of their works notwithstanding, however,Strauss views his interpretations of Xenophon and Plato as merely “begin-ning to begin” to recover the Socratic question. This equally applies to allof the interpretations of other premodern writers he develops and pub-lishes between 1940 and the year of his death, 1973: besides Xenophon,Plato, and Aristophanes, he also studies the art of writing of the RomanEpicurean poet Lucretius and the Greek historian Thucydides. Moreover,there is evidence that he traced the origins of the art of writing all the wayback to the historian Herodotus, to the tragic poets Sophocles, Aeschylus,and Euripides, and even to the oldest epic poets, Homer and Hesiod.62 Inits way, each of these investigations is aimed at understanding the problemof Socrates in its complex relationship to pre- and post-Socratic thought.

Machiavelli’s Oblivion

If the discovery of the art of writing is of momentous importance forStrauss’s approach to premodern thought, it is no less decisive for his ap-proach of modern thought. In a series of interpretations of the founders ofmodern political thought, he argues that they were equally familiar with it.Like their predecessors, they faced political and religious persecution andwere forced to adapt their writing to prevailing views. Unlike their prede-cessors, however, they used the art of writing to gradually overcome thedistinction between philosophers and nonphilosophers and thus to eradi-cate the tension between philosophy and the city. From this perspective,Strauss rereads Spinoza and Hobbes, but also Locke and Rousseau.63

As a result of this reappraisal, he is compelled to revise his earlierview, according to which Spinoza and Hobbes are the founders of modernpolitical thought. The break with the tradition of classical Greek philoso-phy and revealed religion in fact proves to have already been made in thesixteenth century. In the fifteenth chapter of The Prince (1513), NiccolòMachiavelli writes:

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It seems to me better to follow the real truth of things (la verità effet-uale della cosa) than an imaginary view of them. For many Republicsand Princedoms have been imagined that were never seen or knownto exist in reality. And the manner in which we live, and that in whichwe ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the oneto betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to savehimself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of good-ness in everything must be ruined among so many who are not good.64

This passage contains an unprecedented radical critique of classicalpolitical philosophy: instead of starting with the question of the good life,it insists, political thought worthy of the title should focus on the wayhuman beings actually live. For Machiavelli, this is the point of departurefor “new modes and orders” (modi ed ordini nuovi), the discovery of which,he says, is as dangerous as the exploration of “unknown waters and lands(acque e terre incognite).”65 Because of these perils, the “greater Columbus”saw fit, when happening upon the truth, to “hide it between so many lies(fra tante bugie), that one is able to find it only with difficulty.”66

Strauss makes this effort in a probing and complex study of Machi-avelli’s two great political works, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy.67

Starting once again from the surface, he shows that the Florentine, with acurious mixture of reticence and boldness, laid the philosophical founda-tions of modern politics as it was characterized in previous chapters: the re-volt against nature and religion in the name of culture and civilization basedon a new morality rooted in the passions, the rise of practical reason to thedetriment of theoretical reason, and the turn to history. In order to succeed,Machiavelli developed a literary and rhetorical strategy that would becomea model for Hobbes, Spinoza, and other successors: he disguised his attackagainst tradition as an ostensible return to tradition, by means of an am-biguous appeal to the great Roman historian Livy.68 With his strategy,Machiavelli intended to forge an alliance between philosophy and politicsthat would contribute to the improvement of the human condition. As thefirst Enlightenment thinker, however, he was responsible for casting the So-cratic question into oblivion. As Strauss notes, in his works the Florentinenowhere mentions the soul.69 The principal reason, he asserts, is the fol-lowing: Machiavelli “is silent about the soul because he has forgotten thesoul, just as he has forgotten tragedy and Socrates.”70 A little further, Straussexplains what this means: “wisdom is not a great theme for Machiavelli be-cause justice is not a great theme for him.”71 By the same token, the essen-tial Socratic combination of wisdom and moderation has vanished: withMachiavelli, practical reason begins its steep ascent in philosophy.


What is missing in the Florentine’s field of vision is the connectionbetween the problem of wisdom and the problem of justice, or betweenphilosophy and politics, as Socrates discusses it in the Republic. LikeHobbes after him, Machiavelli dismisses classical, Socratic-Platonic politi-cal philosophy without having understood its core.72 And like Hobbes, helays claim to a deeper understanding of human nature, while in fact his newpolitical philosophy rests on a major reduction of the political problem bythe elimination of the question of the best regime. “The consequence is anenormous simplification and, above all, the appearance of the discovery ofa hitherto wholly unsuspected whole continent. . . . [A] stupendous con-traction of the horizon appears to Machiavelli and his successors as a won-drous enlargement of the horizon.”73 Strauss’s choice of spatial metaphorsis far from accidental. While it casts doubt on Machiavelli’s claim to be a“greater Columbus,” it also suggests that he has altogether given up the at-tempt to leave the Platonic cave, the realm of the city.

As Strauss also notes, however, “the narrowing of the horizon whichMachiavelli was the first to effect, was caused, or at least facilitated, by anti-theological ire.”74 In order to succeed, the new philosophy is compelled tocombat another tradition that claims there is something beyond the cave:revealed religion. According to Machiavelli, the success of Christianity inparticular is, in fact, the success of the propaganda disseminated posthu-mously by an “unarmed prophet.” Whoever wishes to install new modesand orders and is similarly unarmed is thus compelled to combat his oppo-nent with the same means. In his political works, Machiavelli mounts acovert antireligious campaign with a view to posthumous victory: the con-quest of the world by an alliance of philosophy and political power.75 As inthe case of Spinoza and Hobbes, however, the unparalleled success of thiscampaign obscured the fact that revealed religion survived the onslaughtessentially intact. Thus, their “anti-theological ire” fueled the “Napoleonicstrategy” of circumventing the “impregnable fortress of orthodoxy.” As wesaw in the previous chapter, this strategy eventually produced the secondcave underneath the Platonic cave, where even the recollection of the So-cratic question and Platonic politics has faded.

In fact, Platonic politics itself may be partly responsible for its de-cline, Strauss suggests. In an essay devoted to the art of writing, he observesabout Alfarabi: “He substitutes politics for religion. He thus may be saidto lay the foundation for the secular alliance between philosophers andprinces friendly to philosophy, and so to initiate the tradition whose mostfamous representatives in the West are Marsilius of Padua and Machi-avelli.”76 By underscoring the continuity between these thinkers, Strauss

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tacitly points to a fundamental discontinuity between East and West. Alfarabi’s substitution of politics for religion influenced Western thoughtmainly through the reception of Averroës by so-called Latin Averroism.77

In the course of this reception, however, the Platonic orientation of thefalasifa was lost. Unlike Alfarabi, Marsilius and Machiavelli no longerviewed the substitution of politics for religion as an esoteric strategy formediating the tension between philosophy and the city. Rather, they saw itas a first step on the way to eradicating this tension altogether. If they wereunaware of the original design, Alfarabi may have concealed it too well forthinkers with a Christian background, Strauss suggests: “the political actionof the philosophers on behalf of philosophy has achieved full success. Onesometimes wonders whether it was not too successful.”78 If this is the case,Platonic politics may well have become a victim of its own success.

Natural Right and the Socratic Question

Thus, taking our cue from Heidegger’s notion of Seinsvergessenheit (“forget-fulness of Being”), we might encapsulate Strauss’s diagnosis of modernity asSokratesvergessenheit (“forgetfulness of Socrates”). That his thought remainsfocused on recovering the Socratic question, even if this is not always madeexplicit, is shown in Natural Right and History (1953), perhaps the best-knownand most widely read of his works. All too often, this book is regarded as aneo-Aristotelian plea for the rehabilitation of the tradition of natural law, ac-companied by a critique of modern positivism and historicism.79 This inter-pretation is seriously misguided, however, if only because the title refers to“natural right” instead of “natural law.” Strauss indeed launches an attack onpositivism and historicism, but he does so from a position that is firmly rootedin his rediscovery of Socratic-Platonic philosophy of the 1930s. Regarding hisunderstanding of natural right, he provides the following clarification: “Thefull understanding of the classic natural right doctrine would require a full un-derstanding of the change in thought that was effected by Socrates. Such anunderstanding is not at our disposal.”80 Even if it is not at our disposal, it doesnot follow that it is completely beyond our reach. By studying the sources, wecan try to understand the Socratic turn and its conditions:

The classic natural right doctrine in its original form, if fully devel-oped, is identical with the doctrine of the best regime. For the ques-tion as to what is by nature right or as to what is justice finds itscomplete answer only through the construction, in speech, of the bestregime. The essentially political character of the classic natural rightdoctrine appears most clearly in Plato’s Republic.81


In this way, it becomes apparent that for Strauss natural right is noth-ing other than the object of the Socratic question, as well as its paradoxicalanswer. The intention underlying Natural Right and History is to make thereader aware of natural right, not as a doctrine or an answer, but as a prob-lem, a question, or, rather, “the primeval question.”82 Shortly after the pub-lication of the book, Strauss writes to his colleague Eric Voegelin: “I donothing more than present the problem of natural right as an unsolved prob-lem.”83 This intention leads him to oppose positivism and historicism, onwhich point he continues the critique he had begun to elaborate at the be-ginning of the 1930s. The addressees of this critique have remained largelyunchanged—Max Weber as the most important representative of posi-tivism, and Nietzsche and Heidegger as the most thoughtful proponents ofhistoricism—as have the main objections. Weberian positivism considersthe Socratic question of the right life to be unanswerable, because the greatvalue systems are locked in an irresolvable conflict that can only be settledby an individual, irrational decision. Nietzschean and Heideggerian histori-cism take one step further, by declaring the Socratic question to be alto-gether pointless. On the basis of modern historical consciousness, it stressesthe relative character of all worldviews, values, and truths. Rejecting the no-tion of a natural horizon and an eternal order, it dismisses the beginning andend of philosophy in its original meaning.

In critical response, Strauss reiterates his foremost objection: bothpositivism and historicism unwarrantedly transform the historical fate ofphilosophy into its task. Instead, he argues, philosophy’s fate should betaken as an inducement to renewed efforts.84 As to what unites Nietzsche,Weber, and Heidegger in their rejection of classical political philosophyand the Socratic question, Natural Right and History provides no explicit an-swer. The few indications that can be found, however, suggest that here aswell Strauss stands by his earlier analysis in Philosophy and Law: the atheismfrom probity, the rebellious heir to biblical faith and to the polemicsagainst it.85 If this is the case, we may surmise that he equally stands by thealternative to the atheism from probity that is adumbrated sotto voce inPhilosophy and Law: “the old love of truth” or philosophic eros, the enig-matic desire for wisdom inseparably connected with the figure of Socrates.Recovering the Socratic question implies the rehabilitation of eros, whichdrove Socrates onto the streets of Athens and impelled Xenophon andPlato to write. Just as it is his “last word” against the antitheological ire ofMachiavelli and his descendants, the unbelieving eros of Socrates isStrauss’s last word, his response to the dogmatic, believing atheism ofNietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger.86 Similarly, Strauss’s emphasis on the

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Socratic turn as philosophy’s turn toward political self-awareness can beseen as a critical rejoinder to their “pre-Socratic” fascination with Beingand the questionable political consequences of this fascination.87

From Jerusalem to Athens (and Back)

For the same reasons, the Socratic life remains the alternative to a return toreligious orthodoxy.88 As we saw at the end of the second chapter, Straussconsidered the way back to Jerusalem to be closed to him. From his critiqueof atheism from probity, we may infer that, as a result, the way to Athenswas the only acceptable option. This option is by no means self-evident,however, not only because the Socratic philosopher requires permanentself-questioning, nor because the road to Athens is especially hard to travel,but also because it is not easy to turn one’s back on Jerusalem. In NaturalRight and History, Strauss offers a memorable formulation of the problem:

Man cannot live without light, guidance, knowledge; only throughknowledge of the good can he find the good that he needs. The funda-mental question, therefore, is whether men can acquire that knowledgeof the good without which they cannot guide their lives individually orcollectively by the unaided efforts of their natural powers, or whetherthey are dependent for that knowledge on Divine Revelation. No al-ternative is more fundamental than this: human guidance of divineguidance. The first possibility is characteristic of philosophy or sciencein the original sense of the term, the second is presented in the Bible.89

The opposition between Jerusalem and Athens is essentially a theological-political conflict, according to Strauss. What is at stake is therelationship between man, society, and transcendence. Of the inscrutableGod of Judaism, no more can be said than what he says of himself toMoses: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, or “I shall be what I shall be,” establishing acovenant with man that requires his unconditional obedience.90 The bib-lical God is a God who answers the question of the right life by revealinghis divine guidance in the form of a divine law. As a political order, thislaw is the point of departure for philosophy, which thereby is essentiallypolitical philosophy. However, this does not do away with the fact that thephilosophic question of the right life also has a theological dimension thatis opposed to the Bible, Strauss holds. When he emphasizes that philoso-phy must begin with what is first “for us,” he adds, “Only by beginning atthis point will we be open to the full impact of the all-important questionwhich is coeval with philosophy although the philosophers do not fre-quently pronounce it—the question quid sit deus.”91


The question “What is God?” once more illustrates the paradoxicalcharacter of Socratic-Platonic political philosophy: while it calls into ques-tion the origin of the law and thus the highest authority of the city, it ap-pears as the highest form of the concern for the divine that is presupposedin obedience to the law.92 Like every other permutation of the Socraticquestion—What is virtue? What is courage? What is nobility?—it reflectsthe priorities of the city, and thus the intimate connection between theol-ogy and politics. By the same token, it is connected to the question of theright life: who or what is the God who rules the city, and who should beobeyed? And by the same token, it testifies to the Socratic question as anattempt to discover nature as that which is independent of both human ar-tifice and divine power. As we saw, it is the fundamental claim of revealedreligion to have definitely answered this question. With regard to the goodlife and “the one thing needful,” therefore, philosophy and revelation areopposed as the question and the answer.

According to Strauss, Athens and Jerusalem represent two fundamen-tally irreconcilable and incompatible views of the right life. According to thefirst, only the philosophical, theoretical life leads to true human happiness.This view leads to an ambiguous relationship to the theological-politicalorder of the city: philosophy as an activity is transmoral and transpolitical,but the philosopher is a political being subject to the authority of the cityand its laws.93 As a result, the philosopher’s obedience to this authority canonly be ambiguous. According to the second view, only the practical, morallife of pious obedience to the divine will leads to felicity.94 This view can-not be dismissed forthwith, Strauss stresses. Revelation offers the most pro-found foundation and the most coherent defense of the superiority of themoral-practical life over the theoretical life as the way to happiness.95 Be-cause of this quality, it is the only worthy opponent of philosophy in its orig-inal meaning. The latter can call revelation into question, but it cannotrefute it, for this would presuppose that it has found a definite answer to thequestion of the right life. Conversely, revelation cannot compel the philoso-pher’s assent with the argument that such assent is of the greatest impor-tance for his salvation: in the philosopher’s view, this would only confirmthe importance of raising the question of the right life, and thus demon-strate the necessity of philosophy.96

Despite their fundamental disagreement, both opponents share acommon background that differs from the horizon erected by modernthought. To begin with, both Athens and Jerusalem acknowledge the im-portance of morality for human life, but they also point to its insufficiency.Their disagreement concerns precisely what is needed to supplementmorality: free contemplation or pious obedience. In this respect, Strauss

EPILOGUE 193

points to the importance of the theioi nomoi or divine laws, the theological-political order that is central to both classical political philosophy and re-vealed religion. A second common ground is the view that man remainsincapable of creating the perfect society. From the perspective of classicalpolitical philosophy, such attempts are bound to come to grief on the un-bridgeable rift between philosophers and nonphilosophers, and thus on thepermanence of conflict among human beings regarding the good, the just,and the noble. For revealed religion, the creation of the perfect society is adivine privilege, and thus beyond the reach of man. Remarkably enough, asa result of this quasi agreement Strauss seems to come to an understandingof the Jewish question as a theological-political question on philosophicalinstead of theological grounds:

Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problemscannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create asociety which is free of contradictions. From every point of view, itlooks as if the Jewish people were the chosen people in the sense, atleast, that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of thehuman problem as a social or political problem.97

At the same time, this shows that Strauss did not acquiesce in a stale-mate between Athens and Jerusalem. Near the middle of his life, he went asfar as he could in trying to provide a genealogical–philosophical explana-tion of faith in revelation, guided by Socrates and Plato.98 According to oneobserver, this means that ultimately he came to see that “the Athens sidecomprehends the Jerusalem side.”99 Whether this assessment is correct ishard to determine, even if it touches the core of Strauss’s philosophic en-deavor. What is clear, however, is that he remained determined to ascertainwhether and how the philosopher would be able to face revelation while re-maining a philosopher after the example of Socrates. This determinationfound a beautiful and noble expression in the following passage:

Whether the Bible or philosophy is right is of course the only ques-tion which ultimately matters. But in order to understand that ques-tion one must first see philosophy as it is. One must not see it fromthe outset through Biblical glasses. Wherever each of us may stand,no respectable purpose is served by trying to prove that we eat thecake and have it. Socrates used all his powers to awaken those whocan think out of the slumber of thoughtlessness. We ill follow his example if we use his authority for putting us to sleep.”100


Notes

Introduction

1. Allan Bloom, “Leo Strauss, September 20, 1899–October 18, 1973,” inGiants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 235.

2. Robert Lacayo, “But Who Has the Power?” Time, June 1996, 41.

3. Cf. Myles Burnyeat, “Sphinx Without a Secret,” New York Review of Books32, no. 9 (1985): 30–36; Charles Larmore, “The Secrets of Philosophy,” New Republic 3 (1989): 30–35; Shadia Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York:St. Martin’s Press, 1988; updated edition 2005) and Leo Strauss and the AmericanRight (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999); Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); John G. Gunnell,“Political Theory and Politics: The Case of Leo Strauss,” Political Theory 13, no. 3(1985): 339–361. For opposite views, see Nathan Tarcov, “Philosophy and History:John Gunnell and Leo Strauss on Tradition and Interpretation,” in Tradition, Interpretation, and Science: Political Theory in the American Academy, ed. John S. Nel-son, 69–112 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986); Peter Berkowitz,“Liberal Zealotry,” Yale Law Journal 103, no. 5 (1994): 1363–1382; Heinrich Meier,Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006); Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

4. Cf. Werner Dannhauser, “Leo Strauss: Becoming Naïve Again,” Ameri-can Scholar 44 (1975): 636–642; George Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker: From Shake-speare to Joyce (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1983): 249–272; Kenneth L. Deutsch andJohn Murley, eds., Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham,MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). For an impression of Strauss as a teacher, see theedited transcripts of his course on Plato’s Symposium: Leo Strauss, On Plato’s Sympo-sium, ed. and with a foreword by Seth Benardete (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2001). Strauss even makes a brief appearance as the shadowy “ProfessorDavarr” in Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 2000), a literaryportrait of Allan Bloom.

5. See John A. Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography (Lan-ham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).

195

6. See Steven Lenzner, “Leo Strauss and the Conservatives,” Policy Review,April/May 2003.

7. Cf. Robert Devigne, Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshott, Strauss and the Re-sponse to Postmodernism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); David L.Schaefer, “Leo Strauss and American Democracy: A Response to Wood andHolmes,” Review of Politics 53, no. 1 (1991): 187–199; Nasser Behnegar, “The Lib-eral Politics of Leo Strauss,” in Political Philosophy and the Human Soul: Essays inMemory of Allan Bloom, ed. Michael Palmer and Thomas L. Pangle, 251–267 (Lan-ham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995).

8. Cf. Raymond Aron, Introduction to Le savant et le politique, by MaxWeber, 31–52 (Paris: Plon, 1959); Claude Lefort, Écrire: À l’épreuve du politique(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1992), 261–301; Laurent Jaffro, Benoît Frydman, Em-manuel Cattin, and Alain Petit, eds., Leo Strauss: art d’écrire, politique, philosophie(Paris: Vrin, 2001); Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss. An Intellectual Biography (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).

9. Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, Vols. 1–3 (Stuttgart/Weimar: VerlagJ. B. Metzler, 1996—2001).

10. Quoted in Alan Udoff, “On Leo Strauss: An Introductory Account,” inLeo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. Alan Udoff, 27 n. 63 (Boul-der, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991).

11. Rémi Brague, “Athènes, Jérusalem, La Mecque. L’interprétation ‘musul-mane’ de la philosophie grecque chez Leo Strauss,” Revue de Métaphysique et deMorale 94, no. 3 (1989): 311.

12. Bloom, “Leo Strauss,” 239.

13. Udoff, “On Leo Strauss,” 13.

14. V. Reinecke and J. Uhlaner, “The Problem of Leo Strauss: Religion,Philosophy, and Politics,” Graduate Philosophy Journal 16, no. 1 (1992): 190.

15. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Hermeneutics and Classical Political Thought inLeo Strauss,” in Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1994), 187 n. 22.

16. Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 64.

17. David Janssens, Tussen Athene en Jeruzalem: filosofie, profetie en politiek inhet werk van Leo Strauss (Amsterdam: Boom, 2001). I owe many thanks to TheoDunkelgrün, who gave an early impulse to the present volume by preparing a drafttranslation of the introduction.

Chapter 1. “In the Grip of the Theological-Political Predicament”

1. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (New York:Schocken Books, 1965). This volume will henceforth be referred to as “SCR.” Orig-inal edition: Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Unter-

196 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

suchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-politischem Traktat (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1930);reprinted in Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 1: Die Religionskritik Spinozas undzugehörige Schriften, ed. Heinrich Meier (Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler,1996), henceforth referred to as “GS 1.”

2. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. ElsaM. Sinclair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), henceforth “PPH.” See Strauss’s corre-spondence with Karl Löwith, in Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften Bd 3: Hobbes’ politis-che Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften, ed. Heinrich Meier, 641, 655–656 (Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, 2001), henceforth referred to as “GS 3.” Cf. Strauss, OnTyranny: Revised and Expanded Edition—Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed.Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (New York: Free Press, 1991), 230, hence-forth “OT.” Cf. Heinrich Meier’s preface in Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 2:Philosophie und Gesetz—Frühe Schriften, ed. Heinrich Meier, x n. 3 (Stuttgart/Weimar:Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1997), henceforth “GS 2.” Although all available English trans-lations of Strauss’s early German writings were used, at times I have made slight alter-ations in order to bring the text closer to the German original.

3. Strauss, SCR, 1.

4. Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft,” in Jewish Philosophyand the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. andintro. by Kenneth Hart Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997),453; henceforth “JPCM.”

5. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews: Can Jewish Faith and History StillSpeak to Us?” in JPCM, 312.

6. Quoted in ibid., 313. See also 286, 322–323.

7. Cf. Strauss, “Freud on Moses and Monotheism,” in JPCM, 286, and“Why We Remain Jews,” in JPCM, 322–323.

8. Strauss himself relates how a childhood encounter with Russian-Jewishrefugees made a profound impression. See Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” inJPCM, 312–313.

9. Cf. Michael Morgan, Dilemmas in Modern Jewish Thought: The Dialecticsof Revelation and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 42.

10. Cf. Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Ori-gins of the Jewish State (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), 88–100. Herzl’spolitical and voluntaristic approach appears very clearly in the motto to his othermajor work, the utopian novel Old New Land (Altneuland): “If you want, it is no fairytale” (Wenn Ihr wollt, ist es kein Märchen). See Theodor Herzl, Old New Land(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997).

11. Jehudah Reinharz, “Ideology and Structure in German Zionism,1882–1933,” in Essential Papers on Zionism, ed. J. Reinharz and A. Shapira, 279–284(New York: New York University Press, 1996).

12. Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts” (with Jacob Klein), in JPCM, 460.Strauss’s conversion to political Zionism probably antedates his military service,

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 197

which he performed between July 1917 and December 1918 as a translator in theGerman army stationed in Belgium. See Edward C. Banfield, “Leo Strauss:1899–1973,” in Remembering the University of Chicago: Teachers, Scientists, and Schol-ars, ed. Edward Shils, 493 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

13. For a thorough and well-documented treatment of Strauss’s involvementin political Zionism, see the editor’s introduction in Strauss, The Early Writings(1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 2002), 3–36; henceforth “EW”.

14. Strauss, “The Zionism of Max Nordau,” in EW, 83.

15. Strauss, “Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion,” in EW, 202.

16. Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” in EW, 108.

17. Strauss, “Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion,” in EW, 204.

18. Strauss, “Zur Ideologie des politischen Zionismus” (“On the Ideology ofPolitical Zionism”), in GS 2, 445.

19. Cf. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle’” and “TheZionism of Nordau,” in EW, 68 and 86.

20. Strauss, “The Zionism of Nordau,” in EW, 85.

21. Cf. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle’” and “Paul deLagarde,” in EW, 67 and 93–94. Cf. Emil Fackenheim, The Jewish Return into His-tory: Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem (New York: SchockenBooks, 1978).

22. Cf. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,’” in EW, 68.With regard to the historicization of Judaism and the influence of Hegelianism inparticular, see Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of theJewish State (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981).

23. Cf. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle’” and “TheZionism of Nordau,” in EW, 67 and 87. Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the founderof the radical Revisionist movement, similarly regarded Zionism as an exponent ofEuropean culture and therefore rejected every form of “orientalism.” See Avineri,The Making of Modern Zionism, 179–180.

24. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,’” in EW, 69.

25. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,” in EW, 70.

26. Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” in JPCM, 319–320.

27. Strauss, SCR, 6.

28. Cf. Strauss, “Ecclesia Militans,” in EW, 127.

29. Cf. Strauss, “Ecclesia Militans” and “Biblical History and Science,” inEW, 125–126 and 132–133.

30. Ibid., 133 (translation slightly altered). Strauss sums up his critique in thewords of the eighteenth-century playwright, poet, philosopher, and theologian


Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: “Thus, what is so nauseating is not orthodoxy itself,but a certain squinting, limping orthodoxy which is unequal to itself!” (GottholdEphraim Lessing, “Gegensätze des Herausgebers,” in Werke in drei Bänden(München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1982), 3:342. Quoted in Strauss, “Biblical Historyand Science,” in EW, 133. Lessing conducted a polemic with the Christian ortho-doxy of his time in which he reproached his opponent for defending faith by one-sidedly and dishonestly stressing its salutary effects. As we shall see, Lessing’sinfluence on Strauss’s thought is considerable.

31. Strauss, “Ecclesia Militans,” in EW, 126.

32. Ibid., 128.

33. Strauss, “Comment on Weinberg’s Critique,” in EW, 118.


35. Ibid.

36. Strauss, “The Zionism of Nordau,” in EW, 85.

37. Cf. Strauss, “The Zionism of Nordau,” in EW, 86–87; SCR, 5; and“Why We Remain Jews,” in JPCM, 318.

38. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 4: “Zionism was almost never wholly divorced fromthe traditional Jewish hopes.”

39. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,’” in EW, 68.

40. Strauss, “Ecclesia Militans,” in EW, 128.

41. Cf. Joseph Cropsey, “Leo Strauss,” in Biographical Supplement to the Inter-national Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (London: Free Press, 1979), 18:746–750.

42. Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” in JPCM, 458. Cf. Ernest L. Fortin,“Gadamer on Strauss: An Interview,” Interpretation 12, no. 1 (1984): 1–13.

43. Simon M. Dubnow, Die Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 10 vols.(Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1925–1930).

44. Strauss, “Biblical History and Science,” in EW, 135.

45. Cf. Strauss, “Sociological Historiography?” and “Biblical History andScience,” in EW, 104 and 134.


47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. See Hermann Cohen, Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Juden-tums (Leipzich: Fock, 1919). The English translation (Religion of Reason Out of theSources of Judaism [New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1972]) contains an introductory essay by Strauss, reprinted in JPCM, 267–282.



51. Franz Rosenzweig, Hegel und der Staat (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1920).

52. Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” in EW, 110. In thesame vein, Strauss wonders in his first publication “whether ‘science’ and ‘state’ . . .are perhaps more closely related to the innermost Jewish tendency . . . a ‘perhaps’at which one may very well arrive if one thinks of the biblical origins of modern sci-ence, of the equally uncanny character of the biblical world” (Strauss, “Response toFrankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,’” in EW, 65).

53. Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige: Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen undsein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Breslau: Trewendt & Granier, 1917). English transla-tion by J. W. Harvey, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in theIdea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (New York: Galaxy Books, 1958).

54. Cf. Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” in EW, 111:“Theology is needed as an autonomous science, insofar as it makes sense to speak ofGod’s being-in-Himself, and insofar as there is knowledge of this being-in-Himself.”


56. Strauss, “The Holy,” in EW, 76.

57. Ibid., 77.

58. Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation between Religion andPhilosophy (New York: Harper, 1952), quoted in Strauss, SCR, 10–11.


60. Ibid., 14.

61. Strauss, “On the Argument with European Science,” in EW, 108 (trans-lation slightly altered).

62. Strauss, “The Holy,” in EW, 75.



65. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart” (“The Spiritual Situation ofthe Present”), in GS 2, 444.

66. Strauss, “Response to Frankfurt’s ‘Word of Principle,’” in EW, 65 (empha-sis added).


68. Cf. Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Glencoe, IL:Free Press, 1959), 225 (henceforth “WPP”).

69. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 171; Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL:Free Press, 1958), 294 (henceforth “TM”); Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writ-ing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952), 35 n. 17 (henceforth “PAW”).

70. Cf. Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1989), 23 (henceforth “RCPR”).


71. Strauss, “The Testament of Spinoza,” in EW, 217–218.

72. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Ed. Pr. (in Spinoza,Opera/Werke (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979), 43. Refer-ences in this and the following chapter are to this edition, henceforth “TTP.”

73. Cf. Strauss, “The Testament of Spinoza,” in EW, 219–220; RCPR, 231;SCR, 5.

74. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 13; “Why We Remain Jews,” in JPCM, 318–319.


76. Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Mai-monides and his Predecessors, trans. Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1995), 27–28 (henceforth “PL”).


78. Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” in JPCM, 460.

Chapter 2. The Shadow of Spinoza

1. Strauss, “The Testament of Spinoza,” in EW, 216; SCR, 15–17.

2. See Hermann Cohen, “Spinoza über Staat und Religion Judentum undChristentum,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke, 1924),290–372.

3. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 161;“On the Bible Science of Spinoza and His Precursors,” in EW, 173; SCR, 15, 208;“The Testament of Spinoza,” in EW, 216.

4. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” in EW, 141.

5. Spinoza, TTP, in pr.

6. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” in EW, 142. Cf. Thomas L. Pangle’s intro-duction to Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, by Leo Strauss (Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1983), 18–20 (henceforth “SPPP”).

7. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” in EW, 158–159.

8. Ibid., 146.

9. Cf. ibid., 144–145, 151–152, 156–157; WPP, 225–226.

10. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” in EW, 148; Spinoza, TTP, v.


12. Spinoza, TTP, v.

13. Ibid., 153.

14. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 119–123.



16. This does not prevent Strauss from agreeing with Cohen that the heremwas fully justified from the orthodox point of view. See Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,”in EW, 160.

17. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” in EW, 160 (translation slightly altered).

18. Rosenzweig had laid the foundations of the academy in “It is Time” (Zeitists), an essay addressed to Cohen. See Strauss’s tribute to Rosenzweig, “Franz Rosen-zweig and the Academy for the Science of Judaism,” in EW, 212. Cf. Nahum Glatzer,Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 49.

19. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza and His Precursors,” inEW, 173; “Vorwort,” GS 1, 55.

20. Apparently, this change was not well received by Strauss’s supervisor atthe academy, Julius Guttmann. In a letter of October 3, 1931, Strauss tells his col-league Gerhard Krüger about certain “deficiencies” (Fehler) in the book that aredue to “the censorship I was under” (GS 3, 393). According to Heinrich Meier,Strauss was forced to alter or omit certain passages Guttmann objected to (Meier,“Vorwort des Herausgebers,” in Strauss, GS 2, n. 10). This probably explains theexceptionally complex and oblique structure of the book.

21. Spinoza, TTP, 84–85. Cf. Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” inEW, 174; SCR, 259; PAW, 144.

22. Strauss, SCR, 114, 143, 173, 263; PAW, 149, 193–194.

23. Strauss, SCR, 115, 259; PAW, 147.

24. Cf. Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 174


26. Spinoza, TTP, 48: “God’s will and God’s intellect are in truth one andthe same; and they can only be distinguished with respect to our thoughts, whichwe form of God’s intellect.”

27. Spinoza, TTP, 51. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 151–154.

28. On the same grounds, Spinoza rejects the idea of God as a lawgiver andof the revealed law as a set of moral or legal norms. The fact that he neverthelesscontinues to use the term “law” while fundamentally changing its content andmeaning testifies to the consistency with which he practices his motto (caute). Cf.David Lachterman, “Laying Down the Law: The Theological-Political Matrix ofSpinoza’s Physics,” in Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. AlanUdoff, 123–153 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991).

29. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 206, 153–155, 201; “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,”in EW, 176–177; PL, 135 n. 2.

30. Cf. Spinoza, TTP, ii.

31. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 217: “Radically understood striving after self-preservation evolves into interest in theory.”


32. Spinoza, TTP, i.

33. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 28, 111–112, 129–130; PAW, 162–163.


35. Ibid., 259 (translation slightly altered; emphasis added). This crucial sen-tence occurs near the end of the book, possibly as a consequence of the censorshipStrauss was under (see note 20). Cf. Strauss, SCR, 114 n. 141.

36. Cf. ibid., 37 n. 2.

37. Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 174.


39. Spinoza, TTP, iv.

40. Ibid., v.

41. Ibid., 166, 168.

42. Cf. SCR, 75, 92–93, 94, 196–97. Strauss later upholds this analysis, asbecomes apparent from PAW, 193–194:

The return to the literal sense of the Bible fulfils an entirely differentfunction within the context of the criticism, based on the Bible, of tradi-tional theology on the one hand and within the context of the attack onthe authority of the Bible on the other. . . . [V]iewed as the standard andcorrective for all later religion and theology, the Bible is the document of“the ancient religion”; viewed as the object of philosophic criticism, theBible is a document transmitting “the prejudices of an ancient nation.”

As we shall see in the section “Fighting the Kingdom of Darkness” in Chapter 5,Thomas Hobbes, like Spinoza a critic of religion and founder of modern liberalism,deploys a similar double strategy. Cf. Pierre Manent, Naissances de la politique mod-erne: Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (Paris: Payot, 1977), 106.

43. According to Strauss, there is no contradiction between the two strate-gies “since both of these occur in Scripture, ‘pure doctrine,’ and ‘prejudices,’ quiteapart from the fact that in each of the two cases his argument proceeds on a differ-ent plane” (Strauss, SCR, 138).

44. Cf. Strauss, PAW, 193.

45. Cf. Spinoza, TTP, 84–92, especially 88: “from the investigation of Scrip-ture this must first be sought that is the most universal and the basis and the foun-dation of the whole of Scripture.”

46. Strauss, SCR, 117. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 230.

47. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 141.

48. Ibid., 144. Cf. ibid., 123.

49. Ibid., 121.


50. 1 Kings 18. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 213–214; RCPR, 265.

51. As Strauss points out, tradition views physical tangibleness as the most im-portant characteristic of a miracle. As a consequence of the critique of religion as wellas of later attempts to rehabilitate miracles, “the fact has been glossed over or sup-pressed that the genuine significance of miracles is direct action by God on corpo-real things” (Strauss, SCR, 291 n. 166). This remark echoes Strauss’s interest in thefactual and material aspect of revelation, which also animates his critique of the reli-gious a priori’s of idealist theology (see the section “Biblical Politics, Biblical Science,and the New Theology” in chapter 1). Cf. Strauss, SCR, 212: “miracles as works ofGod occurring within the corporeal world, and affecting the corporeal world.”

52. In his review of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Gerhard Krüger defines thedemonstrative power of miracles as “the direct, univocal manifestation of a divinecreative power to the ‘simple experience’ (bloße Erfahrung) of all.” See his “Be-sprechung von L. Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwis-senschaft,” Deutsche Literaturzeitung 51 (1931): 2409.

53. Cf. Strauss, PAW, 167.

54. Strauss, SCR, 126. Cf. Walter Soffer, “Modern Rationalism, Miracles,and Revelation: Strauss’s Critique of Spinoza,” in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopherand Jewish Thinker, ed. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, 146 (Lanham,MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994).


56. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 178.

57. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 187; RCPR, 263; Natural Right and History (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1953), 210 (henceforth “NRH”).

58. Spinoza, Letter 75.


60. Cf. Ibid., 140–144.

61. Cf. Strauss, SPPP, 150.


63. Cf. ibid., 177; Soffer, “Modern Rationalism,” 151–152.

64. Strauss, SCR, 136; PL, 32–33; RCPR, 265; Soffer, “Modern Ratio-nalism,” 153


66. Cf. ibid., 213.

67. Ibid., 135.

68. Cf. ibid., 263.

69. Cf. ibid., 181: “‘Prejudice’ is an historical category.”


70. Ibid., 136.

71. Cf. ibid., 263.

72. Ibid., 178.

73. Cf. Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 45(henceforth “CM”):

The rights of man are the moral equivalent of the Ego cogitans. The Egocogitans has emancipated itself entirely from the “tutelage of nature”and eventually refuses to obey any law which it has not originated in itsentirety or to dedicate itself to any “value” of which it does not knowthat it is its own creation.

Cf. Strauss, “The Crisis of Our Times,” in The Predicament of Modern Politics, ed.Harold J. Spaeth, 97 (Detroit, MI: University of Detroit Press, 1964).

74. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 181–182. See also Strauss’s letter of July 17, 1935, toKarl Löwith in GS 3, 656.


76. Cf. Exodus 20:18–19, quoted in Strauss, SCR, 179.


78. Strauss, SCR, 179 (see also n. 229). See also Strauss, “The Holy,” inEW, 76–77. Cf. Susan Shell, “Taking Evil Seriously: Schmitt’s ‘Concept of the Po-litical’ and Strauss’s ‘True Politics,’” in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and JewishThinker, ed. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, 179 (Lanham, MD: Row-man & Littlefield Publishers, 1994).

79. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 264: “No miracle was performed in the presence offirst-rate physicists.”

80. Cf. ibid., 265; SPPP, 151; PAW, 105.

81. Strauss, SCR, 214. Cf. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” inJPCM, 360; Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968),166 (henceforth “LAM”).

82. Spinoza, TTP, 166

83. Ibid., 167.


85. Cf. ibid., 148–149; “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 177.

86. Spinoza, TTP, 100.

87. Strauss, SCR, 174–176.

88. The English translation alternately uses “theory of prophecy” and “doc-trine of prophecy” where the German original systematically has “Prophetologie.”Cf. Strauss, SCR, 155, 172, 183.


89. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 180; SCR, 175.

90. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 180; SCR,171–172.


92. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 179. Cf. Strauss,SCR, 229.

93. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 177–178.

94. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 1–19; CM, 15.

95. Compare the title of the first part of the Ethics with that of the first partof Hobbes’s Leviathan: “De Deo” (Of God ) and “Of Man,” respectively.

96. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 239: “Spinoza’s doctrine of natural right is free fromany consideration of the specifically human; it is conceived in terms of the cosmosalone.” Hobbes’s concern for a human concept of justice, on the other hand, impelshim to seek a meaningful distinction between right and might. See chapter 5.

97. In Letter 50, Spinoza writes to Jarig Jelles that his difference withHobbes consists therein “that I always preserve natural right intact, and only allotto the chief magistrates in every state a right over their subjects commensurate withthe excess of their power over the power of the subjects. This is what always takesplace in the state of nature.”

98. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 228–229. A striking example can be found in the in-troduction to third chapter of the Ethics:

Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein;for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her ef-ficacy and power of action; that is, nature’s laws and ordinances, wherebyall things come to pass and change from one form to another, are every-where and always the same. . . . Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy,and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity andefficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through whichthey are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of beingknown as the properties of anything else, whereof the contemplation initself affords us delight.

99. Cf. Strauss, SPPP, 212–213.

100. Cf. Strauss, LAM, 201.

101. Cf. Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 177; SCR,165–166, 171.

102. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 188–189.

103. Cf. ibid., 168–169.

104. Ibid., SCR, 164. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 234.

105. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 164, 169, 171. As in his critical review of Cohen’s


analysis, Strauss rejects a psychological explanation of Spinoza’s attitude: whoeverinvokes rancor and vengefulness on Spinoza’s part to explain the herem invertscause and consequence. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen’s Analysis,” in EW, 160, where Straussalready mentions Spinoza’s “alienation from Judaism.”

106. Cf. Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 182; SCR, 156–160.

107. Spinoza, TTP, i.


109. Ibid., 194 (translation slightly altered).

110. Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 184; SCR, 195. Straussquotes from Letter 21, where Spinoza writes to Willem van Blijenbergh: “I feel thatwhen I have obtained a firm proof, I cannot fall into a state of doubt concerning it,I acquiesce entirely in what is commended to me by my understanding, without anysuspicion that I am being deceived in the matter.” Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 258.

111. Strauss, SCR, 195–196.

112. Remarkably enough, Spinoza also reduces his opponent’s position toone of subservience to carnal desires. Cf. Shell, “Taking Evil Seriously,” 182.

113. Strauss, SCR, 208. In this respect, Spinoza’s appeal to Paul’s critique ofJewish Law is entirely unjustified, Strauss judges: “In Paul, the deepest awareness ofsin rebels against legalism, while Spinoza’s rejection of the Law rests on the rejec-tion of obedience as such, and rests ultimately on the absence of any awareness ofsin” (Strauss, “On Spinoza’s Bible Science,” in EW, 185). Cf. Spinoza, TTP,40–41. In this context, we may again refer to Rudolf Otto’s views on the numinouscharacter of divine transcendence, which made a profound impression on the youngStrauss (see the section “Biblical Politics, Biblical Science, and the New Theology”in chapter 1).

114. Jeremiah 18:6, quoted by Spinoza in Letter 75. Although Strauss doesnot mention it, Maimonides quotes the same verse in his Letter on Astrology to theJewish community of Marseille. Spinoza, who refers to Maimonides’s correspon-dence in the Theological-Political Treatise, may also have seen this epistle. See MosesMaimonides, “Letter on Astrology,” in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook,ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, 188–229 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress, 1963); Spinoza, TTP, 167.

115. As Soffer rightly remarks, Calvin’s view is the exact opposite of Spin-oza’s. For both, the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is merelystatistical, not ontological: all phenomena are attributed to a single power, eitherGod or nature. See Soffer, “Modern Rationalism,” 156 n. 20. Cf. Shell, “TakingEvil Seriously,” 181.

116. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 197: “God in His limitless power and freedom can usethe things created by Him as tools, as His will; He was able to make the plants growbefore the creation of the sun, thus without the apparently necessary sunshine; hecould stay the sun in its course at the prayer of Joshua.” Cf. Strauss, “On the Inter-pretation of Genesis,” in JPCM, 363–364; SPPP, 151–163.



118. Ibid., 204.

119. Cf. ibid., 28–29; Soffer, “Modern Rationalism,” 143.

120. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 205–206; PL, 31–32; “On the Interpretation of Gen-esis,” in JPCM, 360; NRH, 59–62, 60 n. 20.


122. Cf. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics (Princeton. NJ: Prince-ton University Press 1989), vol. 2, ix.

123. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 186; SCR, 29;NRH, 30; “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,” Independent Journalof Philosophy 3 (1979): 117. In the wake of Strauss’s analysis, Michael Morgan (Dilem-mas in Modern Thought, 48) makes the interesting suggestion that Spinoza is an “as if ”thinker, in the sense of Hans Vaihinger’s “philosophy of the As If.” Cf. Hans Vai-hinger, The Philosophy of “As If ”: A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fic-tions of Mankind (London: Kegan Paul, 1945).

124. Strauss, SCR, 196 (punctuation slightly altered).

125. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 29; Kenneth Hart Green, Jew and Philosopher: The Re-turn to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1993), 11.

126. Cf. Strauss “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 184–185. Seealso Krüger, “Besprechung von Leo Strauss,” 2407: “Thus one unjustifiable (unbe-gründbare) tendency of the experience of the world is opposed to the other: to thisextent, the opponents talk at cross-purposes.”

127. Cf. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 186; SCR,208–211.

128. Strauss, SCR, 29, 37–46. In Letter 56, Spinoza writes to Hugo Boxel:“The authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, does not carry much weight withme. I should have been astonished, if you had brought forward Epicurus, Democri-tus, Lucretius, or any of the atomists, or upholders of the atomic theory.” Cf.Strauss, PAW, 152; PL, 35.

129. Strauss, SCR, 209. As the most important representatives of this tradi-tion, Strauss names Da Costa, La Peyrère, Hobbes, Hume, Holbach, Feuerbach,Bauer, and Marx (Strauss, SCR, 45).


131. Ibid., 299–300 n. 276.

132. Ibid., 71.

133. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 169. Cf. ibid., 279–280.

134. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 37–38, 59, 70, 88; LAM, x.


135. Strauss, SCR, 146. In the same context, Strauss acknowledges his debt forthis insight: “The Enlightenment, as Lessing put it, had to laugh orthodoxy out of aposition from which it could not be driven by any other means” (Strauss, SCR, 143).


137. Strauss, “The Testament of Spinoza,” in EW, 216–223.

138. Ibid., 221.


140. Cf. ibid., 4; “Why We Remain Jews,” in JPCM, 317–318; RCPR, 233;“On Husik’s Work in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” in JPCM, 254.

141. Strauss, SCR, 5. Cf Strauss, WPP, 13; “Why We Remain Jews,” inJPCM, 318–319. Cf. Ralph Lerner, “Leo Strauss (1899–1973),” American JewishYear Book 76, no. 91–97 (1976): 95–96.

142. Strauss, SCR, 5. See also Strauss’s letter on the State of Israel to theeditor of National Review in JPCM, 413–414.


144. Strauss, letter of January 7, 1930, in GS 3, 380–381.


Chapter 3. The Second Cave


2. Ibid.

3. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H.Jacobis” (“The Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of FriedrichHeinrich Jacobi”), reprinted in GS 2, 237–292. Strauss wrote his dissertation underthe supervision of Ernst Cassirer (a student of Hermann Cohen), and defended it inHamburg on September 17, 1921. Strauss’s research was part of Cassirer’s large-scale project on the problem of knowledge in modern philosophy. Cf. Ernst. Cas-sirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit(Berlin: Cassirer, 1920). Cf. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 291.

4. Strauss’s introductions were published in volumes 2, 3.1, and 3.2 of theJubiläumsausgabe (Stuttgart: Friedrich Fromman Verlag [Günther Holzboog],1974). The edition, begun in 1929, was interrupted in 1936 as a result of the polit-ical situation, so that only volumes 1 to 3.1 were published. Only when the editionwas resumed in 1974, did volume 3.2—which contains all of Strauss’s writings onthe Pantheism Controversy—become available. In 1946, Strauss wrote the plan ofa book to be entitled Philosophy and the Law: Historical Essays, which was never pub-lished. The tenth chapter of this book was to be devoted to the Pantheism Contro-versy. See Strauss, JPCM, 470.


5. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 249. Cf. Strauss, NRH,173–174, 201; RCPR, 243–244; LAM, 212.

6. Cf. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 249.

7. Cf. ibid., 285. Cf. Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Phi-losophy from Kant to Fichte (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 81, 89–91.

8. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 252.


10. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden und An die Freunde Lessings,” inGS 2, 537–538. Cf. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 278.

11. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” in GS 2, 549.

12. Ibid., 533–535. See Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, andRomanticism: The Genesis of Modern Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1992).

13. Cf. Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 89.

14. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 242–243, 270, 274–275,277, 279–280, 282.

15. Ibid., 245–247, 252.

16. Strauss, SCR, 183–186.

17. Strauss, “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis of WesternCivilization,” in JPCM, 117. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 28–29: “The Ethics thus begs the de-cisive question, the question as to whether the clear and distinct account is as suchtrue and not merely a plausible hypothesis. . . . Spinoza’s Ethics attempts to be thesystem but does not succeed; the clear and distinct account of everything that it pre-sents remains fundamentally hypothetical.”

18. Strauss, NRH, 30.

19. Strauss “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 251–252.

20. See chapter 1.

21. Strauss, “On the Bible Science of Spinoza,” in EW, 186.



24. Ibid., 247–248.

25. Strauss, SCR, 178–182.

26. Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem,” in GS 2, 282 n. 135.

27. Ibid., 282.


28. See chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Beiser, The Fate of Reason. In his account,Beiser names Strauss’s introductions among the “best treatments” of the contro-versy. Cf. Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 335 n. 12. See also Alexander Altmann, MosesMendelssohn: A Biographical Study (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) andHermann Timm, Gott und die Freiheit: Studien zur Religionsphilosophie der Goethezeit(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1974). The main documents of the Controversy wereedited and published in H. Scholz, ed., Die Hauptschriften zum Pantheismusstreitzwischen Jacobi und Mendelssohn (Berlin: Reuther and Reichard, 1916). A concise dis-cussion of Mendelssohn’s position in the controversy, critical of Strauss’s account,can be found in Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1994).

29. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” in GS 2, 531. Cf. Beiser, TheFate of Reason, 61.


31. Ibid., 587.

32. Cf. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism,trans. Allan Arkush, with a commentary by Alexander Altmann (Hanover, NH:University Press of New England, 1984).

33. Leo Strauss, “Einleitung zu Phädon,” in GS 2, 491. Cf. Strauss, PL, 44.

34. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” in GS 2, 583–586.

35. Ibid., 585.

36. In PL, 78 n. 28, Strauss renders this criticism more explicit by pointingout the Hobbesian pedigree of Mendelssohn’s “surrender of the ancient naturalright of duty in favor of the modern natural right of claim.”

37. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” in GS 2, 573–574.

38. Leo Strauss, “Einleitung zu Sache Gottes, oder die gerettete Vorsehung,” inGS 2, 527.

39. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” GS 2, 578. Challenging Strauss’sthesis, Arkush argues that Mendelssohn “could have defended Judaism withoutdownplaying the importance or denying the possibility of philosophical knowledgeof religious truths,” because he never did “place such an absolute value on philo-sophical knowledge” in the first place. Rather, Mendelssohn regarded the balancebetween reason and common sense he tried to strike as a temporary settlement, inanticipation of an ultimate demonstrative proof of God’s existence. Arkush, MosesMendelssohn and the Enlightenment, 88–93.


41. Ibid., 587.

42. Ibid., 575–576.


43. Ibid., 573. On 577, Strauss comments on Mendelssohn’s “pride in thisprogress [of metaphysics] and, at the same time, the concomitant inability to under-stand the character of Aristotelian ethics, which had been adopted by Maimonides.”

44. Ibid., 588. With slight alterations, I reproduce Beiser’s translation ofboth quotations in The Fate of Reason, 88–89. On 88, Beiser aptly dubs Jacobi’s doc-trine an “epistemology of action.”


46. See Strauss’s letter of May 12, 1935, to Gerhard Krüger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, where he writes that in the introduction to Philosophy and Law hehad tried to repair the “formal shortcomings” of the Spinoza book (GS 3, 446–447).

47. Strauss, PL, 32. Cf. Green, Jew and Philosopher, 17.

48. Krüger, “Besprechung von Leo Strauss,” 2410.

49. Strauss, PL, 33–34.

50. Ibid., 37.

51. Perhaps Sigmund Freud may be added to this list. Although the youngStrauss initially appreciates the frank unreligious outlook of Freud’s The Future of anIllusion, he later becomes more critical of his Spinozist, Machiavellian, and Nietz-schean antecedents, as becomes apparent from a lecture he gave in 1958 on Freud’sMoses and Monotheism (probably in 1958). Compare Strauss, “Sigmund Freud, TheFuture of an Illusion,” in EW, 202–208 and Strauss, “Freud on Moses and Monothe-ism,” in JPCM, 285–309).

52. Strauss, PL, 37–38.


54. See also Strauss, “Introductory Essay to Hermann Cohen, Religion ofReason,” in JPCM, 281; Strauss’s letter of December 12, 1932, to Gerhard Krüger,in GS 3, 414.

55. See Strauss’s letter of December 12, 1932, in GS 3, 414–415.

56. Strauss, SCR, 12–13.

57. Strauss’s critique of intellectual probity and its roots in biblical moral-ity is a recurring topic in his correspondence with Gerhard Krüger and KarlLöwith. See GS 3, 380, 414, 620, 632, 636, 662, 676, 686, 696. See also Strauss,“The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” in Heinrich Meier, LeoStrauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006), 130.


59. Strauss, PL, 38. In 1934, shortly before the publication of Philosophy andLaw, Strauss still defends political Zionism as “the most decent Jewish movement”and the only acceptable alternative to orthodoxy in a letter to his friend Jacob Klein(letter of June 23, 1934, in GS 3, 516).


60. Strauss, letter of December 27, 1932, in GS 3, 420. In a lecture deliveredin 1932, we find the rhetorical question, “How shall he pray who does not believein God?” (Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 444)

61. Strauss, PL, 38.

62. Ibid., 137 n. 13.


64. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 377–391; “Diegeistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 441–464.

65. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 389. Cf. Strauss, “Diegeistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 446; PL, 135 n. 2.

66. That Strauss regards Nietzsche as part of the Enlightenment is furtherborne out in his correspondence with Karl Löwith, where he interprets the Will toPower and the Eternal Return as attempts to liberate man from the deeply rooted“pampering” (Verwöhnung) by faith in creation and providence. In the same context,Strauss connects Nietzsche’s rejection of “it was” (es war) to Descartes’s critique ofthe Aristotelian analysis of the manifest order of the world, in the name of a philos-ophy that focuses on what is immediately given. Cf. Strauss’s letters to Löwith ofJune 23 and July 17, 1935, in GS 3, 649 and 656. See the section “Spinoza’s TwofoldStrategy” in chapter 2.

67. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 387.

68. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 450–451;LAM, 23; SPPP, 147–149; RCPR, 34.

69. Strauss refers to the “polytheism of values” that Max Weber views as thecentral characteristic of modernity. Strauss reiterates this critique of Weber twentyyears later in Natural Right and History (cf. NRH, 36–80). See also Strauss, “Reviewof Julius Ebbinghaus, On the Progress of Metaphysics,” in EW, 214–215; “Der Kon-spektivismus,” in GS 2, 374; “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 447–448.

70. In particular, Strauss has in mind the so-called Conspectivism developedby the sociologist Karl Mannheim. Cf. Strauss, “Der Konspektivismus,” in GS 2,365–375; “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 449; RCPR, 34–35.

71. In particular, Strauss envisages the philosophy of history developed byOswald Spengler in Decline of the West. Cf. Strauss, “Review of Ebbinghaus,” inEW, 214; “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 452; “The Crisis of OurTime,” 43, 48; RCPR, 41, 241; “The Three Waves of Modernity,” in Hilail Gildin,ed., An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss (Detroit, MI:Wayne State University Press, 1975), 81, 94; “On Collingwood’s Philosophy ofHistory,” Review of Metaphysics 5, no. 4 (1952), 563; CM, 2–3; SPPP, 32.

72. Strauss, “Der Konspektivismus,” in GS 2, 372.

73. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 284. Cf. Strauss, “DerKonspektivismus,” in GS 2, 373; NRH, 20; “Vorwort zu einem geplanten Buch überHobbes,” in GS 3, 213–214; letter to Karl Löwith of July 11, 1964, in GS 3, 693.


74. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 452.

75. Ibid., 452. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 32.

76. Eighteen years later, Strauss repeats this diagnosis in similar terms: “Ifthe ‘anarchy of systems’ exhibited by the history of philosophy proves anything, itproves our ignorance concerning the most important subjects . . . , and therewith itproves the necessity of philosophy. It may be added that the ‘anarchy’ . . . of ourtime, or of present-day interpretations of the past, is not conspicuously smaller thanthat of . . . the past” (Strauss, WPP, 62).


78. Plato, Gorgias, 500c (all references to Platonic dialogues are based on theStephanus edition). Cf. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2,379–385, 389–390; “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 445–446. Cf.Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper, eds. and trans., Faith and Political Philosophy: TheCorrespondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934–1964 (University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 90 (henceforth “FPP”).

79. Plato, Apology, 38a.

80. The only one to perceive the importance of this distinction at the time of the publication of Philosophy and Law is Strauss’s friend Jacob Klein. See Klein’sletter of May 6, 1935, to Strauss in GS 3, 539.

81. Plato, Republic, 514a–519d.

82. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 70.


84. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 445; NRH,83–84.


86. Cf. Strauss, “The Crisis of Our Time,” 37.

87. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 448–452. Cf.Strauss, “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” 575–576.

88. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 446, 452, 455;NRH, 25, 28; WPP, 72–73, 255; RCPR, 327; “On Collingwood’s Philosophy ofHistory,” 585; “The Crisis of Our Time,” 42.

89. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, vol. 1, 31, quoted in Strauss, “Diegeistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 455–456 and PL, 57.


91. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 456; “ReligiöseLage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 387. Already in 1929, Strauss sees it as his primarytask to discover “what the world, in which science originated, looked like before theirruption (Einbruch) of biblical consciousness[.] Only by turning to this world can


the horizon be gained in which alone radical questioning and answering are nowpossible” (Strauss, “Der Konspektivismus,” in GS 2, 375).


93. See Strauss’s letters to Karl Löwith of August 20, 1946, of March 15,1962, and of March 12, 1970, in GS 3, 666, 686, 696.

94. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 456; PL, 46 n.2; TM, 231; LAM, 201; PAW, 33; WPP, 44.

95. Cf. Strauss’s letter to Karl Löwith of August 15, 1946, in GS 3,660–663; Strauss, “Existentialism,” Interpretation 22, no. 3 (1995): 301–320.

96. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 390. Cf. Strauss, “OnCollingwood’s Philosophy of History,” 578; CM, 1, 9; “The Crisis of Our Time,” 53.

97. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 461; CM, 55;RCPR, 152, 150–156, 187; “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” 582–586;“On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” Social Research 13, no. 3(1946): 347–352; SPPP, 38, 67; PAW, 16; LAM, 45–46, 54, 58, 61, 65; The Argu-ment and the Action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 1–2(henceforth AAPL); FPP, 78–79.

98. Cf. Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” in JPCM, 462: “[Heidegger] intended to uproot Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, but this presupposed thelaying bare of its roots, the laying bare of it as it was and not just as it had come toappear in the light of the tradition and of modern philosophy”; SCR, 10: “with thequestioning of traditional philosophy the traditional understanding of the traditionbecomes questionable.”

99. Strauss, “An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John’s Col-lege in Honor of Jacob Klein,” in JPCM, 450.

100. Cf. Strauss, “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” 585; FPP, 58.

101. Strauss, “Review of Julius Ebbinghaus,” in EW, 214. Cf. Strauss, “On aNew Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” 330 n. 3; “On Collingwood’s Phi-losophy of History,” 577, 584–585; WPP, 68. This “prejudice against prejudices” isthe basis of the modern concept of progress. Cf. Frederick Lawrence, “Leo Strauss andthe Fourth Wave of Modernity,” in Leo Strauss and Judaism: Athens and Jerusalem Crit-ically Revisited, ed. David Novak, 141(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

102. Strauss is thinking of nineteenth-century German philology as devel-oped by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. Thisapproach, he judges, has destroyed every motivation to read texts seriously and in anonhistoricist manner. Cf. FPP, 79, 90; CM, 10. For a critique of modern philol-ogy’s reading of classical philosophy in Strauss’s spirit, see Thomas L. Pangle, ed.,The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1987), 1–20.

103. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 34. This readiness underlies the “ministerial” man-ner of interpreting Strauss defends in his brief but captivating correspondence with


Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cf. Strauss, “Correspondence with Hans-Georg Gadamerconcerning Wahrheit und Methode,” Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 6–7,9, 11. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einerphilosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972), 20 n. 4, 255 n. 1, 278n. 2, 302 n. 1, and Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1986), 299–300,401, 414–424, 501. See also Fortin, “Gadamer on Strauss: An Interview”; Cather-ine H. Zuckert, Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

104. Strauss, “Review of Julius Ebbinghaus,” in EW, 215. Heinrich Meierfittingly speaks of “a retrial of philosophy that advances in a direction contrary tothat of ‘historical progress’” (Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem,62). In a letter of August 15, 1946, Strauss writes to Karl Löwith, “We agree thattoday we need historical reflection—only I assert that it is neither a progress nor afate to submit to with resignation, but an unavoidable means for the overcoming ofmodernity. . . . [W]e attempt to learn from the ancients” (GS 3, 662). Cf. ThomasL. Pangle and Nathan Tarcov, “Epilogue: Leo Strauss and the History of PoliticalPhilosophy,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey,911 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

105. Cf. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 451; LAM,75; FPP, 88.

106. Fifteen years later, Strauss repeats this view in a telling passage:People may become so frightened of the ascent to the light of the sun,and so desirous of making that ascent utterly impossible to any of theirdescendants, that they dig a deep pit beneath the cave in which theywere born, and withdraw into that pit. If one of the descendants de-sired to ascend to the light of the sun, he would first have to try toreach the level of the natural cave, and he would have to invent newand most artificial tools unknown and unnecessary to those who dweltin the natural cave. He would be a fool, he would never see the lightof the sun, he would lose the last vestige of memory of the sun, if heperversely thought that by inventing his new tools he had progressedbeyond the ancestral cave-dwellers.” (PAW, 155–156)

Notice the suggestion that man has become frightened of the philosophic ascentfrom the first cave due to the additional, historical obstacle. Cf. Strauss, “The Cri-sis of Our Time,” 54.

107. Compare the lapidary formulation in Philosophy and Law: “To that endand only to that end is the ‘historicizing’ of philosophy justified and necessary: onlythe history of philosophy makes possible the ascent from the second, ‘unnatural’cave” (Strauss, PL, 136 n. 2). Cf. Strauss, “Religiöse Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2,390, 462; “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” 328; FPP, 12.

108. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart,” in GS 2, 461. Strauss im-mediately adds that Nietzsche only laid bare the Socratic question, but failed toraise it again with the necessary seriousness. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 26; letter to KarlLöwith of June 23, 1935, in GS 3, 648–650.


109. Strauss developed the idea of reopening the quarrel right after Spinoza’sCritique of Religion. See Strauss, “The Testament of Spinoza,” in EW, 217, wherehe speaks of “the moment when the ‘querelle des anciens et des modernes’ withinphilosophy had been decided on the main point in favor of the moderns.” Cf.Strauss, RCPR, 243; “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,”326; TM, 112.

Chapter 4. The Order of Human Things

1. Hermann Cohen, “Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis,” in Mose benMaimon: Sein Leben, seine Werke und sein Einfluß, vol. 1, ed. W. Bacher, M. Brann,and D. Simonsen, 63–134, 105 (Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 1908). See A. S. Bruckstein,trans., Ethics of Maimonides (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).

2. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 393–436. The lecture wasgiven on May 4, 1931, at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums inBerlin (see the editor’s notice in GS 2, 619–620).

3. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 395–397, 403–405.

4. Cohen, “Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis,” 81, quoted in Strauss,“Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 416. Cf. ibid., 421.

5. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 416, 421.

6. Cf. ibid., 394, 402, 417; RCPR, 28; SPPP, 172, 236–239.

7. Ibid., 396.

8. See Strauss’s letter of May 7, 1931, to Gerhard Krüger, in GS 3, 385.

9. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 420; PL, 130–131.

10. Plato, Republic, 519d–520a.

11. Cf. Rémi Brague, “Leo Strauss et Maïmonide,” in Maimonides and Phi-losophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophic Encounter, May 1985, ed.Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel, 246–268 (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986).

12. See the section “Maimonides: The Limits of Reason and the Interest inRevelation” in chapter 2.

13. Cf. Strauss, PL, 103–104; “Quelques remarques sur la science politiquede Maïmonide et de Fârâbî,” in, GS 2, 140–141; PAW, 10.

14. Cf. Strauss, PL, 109–110, 65. One may also think of Strauss’s remarksin Spinoza’s Critique of Religion on the “will to mediacy” characteristic of the recep-tion of prophecy. See the section “Spinoza’s Twofold Strategy” in chapter 2.

15. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 422. Cf. Strauss, PL, 106–120;“Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 140–142; “Eine vermißte Schrift Farâbîs,” in GS 2,168–169 n. 1a.

16. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 423.


17. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 424. Cf. Strauss, PL, in GS 2,73–74, 118–122; “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 145–147. See also the section“Maimonides” in chapter 2.

18. Falasifa is the Arabic transliteration of the Greek philosophoi, “philosophers.”

19. Avicenna adopts the Aristotelian division of philosophy or science: (1) the theoretical sciences: logic, physics, and metaphysics; (2) the practical sci-ences: economics, ethics and politics.

20. Avicenna, “On the Parts of the Sciences,” in Tis’ Rasâ’il (Constantinople,1298), quoted in Strauss, PL, 122 (in the English translation, the date of publicationhas erroneously been changed to 1928).

21. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 425; PL, in GS 2, 122;“Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 140; “Eine vermißte Schrift Farâbîs,” in GS 2, 92,97 n. 1, 98; “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” in GS 2,184; “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” in GS 2,195, 198; PAW, 10–11; WPP, 161; RCPR, 218, 223–224. In 1933, Strauss writesabout his research: “The research . . . led me from Maimonides to Islamic philoso-phers, of whom I studied several in Arabic manuscripts—and made me realize thatthe connection between medieval Jewish and Islamic teaching on prophecy andPlato’s Statesman and Laws has not yet been thoroughly evaluated” (letter of No-vember 30, 1933, to Cyrus Adler, quoted in Hildegard Korth, Guide to the LeoStrauss Papers [Chicago: University of Chicago Library, Department of SpecialCollections, 1978], 5).

22. Cf. FPP, 17: “the basis of their political doctrine is expressly Plato’s ownthoughts.”

23. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 425: “Avicenna understands theaction of the prophets in accordance with the instructions given by Plato’s State.”Cf. Strauss, PL, 124–125: “The prophet is the founder of the ideal state. The classicmodel of the ideal state is the Platonic state. . . . The prophet is the founder of thePlatonic state; the prophet carries out what Plato called for. . . . Here politics are tobe understood in the Platonic sense: for Alfarabi it is not a matter of a state in gen-eral, but of the state directed to the specific excellence of man, the ‘excellent state’,the ideal state”; “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 125–126.

24. Plato, Republic, 519d.

25. Ibid., 520c.

26. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 426; PL, 81–82.

27. Plato, Laws, 631c. Cf. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 146–148;“On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” in GS 2, 198.

28. Cf. Strauss, PL, 131–132.

29. See the section “Maimonides” in chapter 2.

30. Strauss, PL, 132; “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 427.


31. Strauss even wonders whether the falasifa may have refrained deliber-ately from translating or commenting on the Politics. Cf. Strauss, “Cohen undMaimuni,” in GS 2, 426–427; PL, 129; “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 127–128;“On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Political Teaching,” in GS 2, 197.

32. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 213–216.

33. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 428. Besides Jews and Greeks,the ancient concept of law also includes the Muslims: the Arabic namús, which sig-nifies “custom,” “usage,” or “norm,” is related to the Greek nomos.

34. Cf. Romans 7; Galatians 3–4.

35. Strauss already offers this view in his research on the Pantheism Contro-versy. In its struggle against Calvinism in particular, the Enlightenment gave prece-dence to divine goodness over divine justice. According to Strauss, Leibniz’s“restoration” of the orthodox identification of justice and goodness “by the dissolu-tion of the classic concept of justice, in which the original sense of justice as obedienceto the law had been preserved, considerably furthered the process that aimed at push-ing back the law as duty in favor of right as claim” (Strauss, GS 2, 527). Cf. Strauss,“Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 126: “it is not the Bible and the Koran, it is perhapsthe New Testament, it is certainly the Reformation and modern philosophy that havebrought about the break with ancient thought.” See the section “The Crisis of Enlightment: Jacobi, Mendelssohn, and the Pantheism Controversy” in chapter 3.


37. Three years before his death, Strauss said of his discovery of the passagein Avicenna: “Then I began to begin [sic] to understand Maimonides’s prophetol-ogy and eventually, as I believe, the whole Guide of the Perplexed” (“A Giving of Accounts,” in JPCM, 463). Cf. Heinrich Meier, “Vorwort des Herausgebers,” inGS 2, xviii.

38. Strauss, PL, 73. Cf. Strauss, PAW, 8: “If Islamic and Jewish medievalphilosophy must be understood properly, they must be of philosophic and notmerely of antiquarian interest, and this in turn requires that one ceases to regardthem as counterparts of Christian scholasticism.” See Strauss’s letter of October 2,1935 to Gerschom Scholem, in GS 3, 715–716. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 221–223;Brague, “Athènes, Jérusalem, La Mecque,” 327–333; Green, Jew and Philosopher,104; Clark A. Merrill, “Christianity and Politics: Leo Strauss’s Indictment of Chris-tian Philosophy,” Review of Politics 62, no. 1 (2000): 77–106.

39. Cf. Strauss, PL, 55–56; Richard Kennington, “Strauss’s Natural Rightand History,” Review of Metaphysics 35 (1981): 57–86, 60; Victor Gourevitch, “TheProblem of Natural Right and the Fundamental Alternatives in Natural Right andHistory,” in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective, ed. Kenneth L.Deutsch and Walter Soffer, 30 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).


41. Cf. Strauss, PL, 78: “the necessary connection between politics and the-ology (metaphysics), on which we have stumbled as if by accident.”


42. Strauss, FPP, 78. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 248.

43. Strauss, PL, 82. Cf. ibid., 57; PAW, 20.

44. Strauss, PL, 76. Cf. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 156.


46. Ibid., 75.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., 78–79. Cf. Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency andPolitical Teaching,” in GS 2, 189.

49. Strauss, “Maimunis Lehre von der Prophetie und ihre Quellen,” LeMonde Oriental: Revue des Études Orientales 28 (1934): 99–139.

50. See the editor’s notes, in GS 2, 610.

51. Quoted in Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 414.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., 410.

54. Ibid., 412.

55. Plato, Apology, 21a–22a.


57. Cf. Strauss, LAM, 214–215.

58. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 413. Cf. Plato, Apology, 31c,33a; Gorgias, 490e. Cf. Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2001), 246–247.

59. Cf. Strauss, CM, 69, 109, 112, 115, 128. Cf. David Janssens, “Questionsand Caves: Philosophy, Politics, and History in Leo Strauss’s Early Work,” Jour-nal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 10 (2000): 111–144.

60. Quoted in Stendhal, The Red and the Black, (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin2002), ch. 22, beginning.

61. For an English translation, see Lerner and Mahdi, eds., Medieval PoliticalPhilosophy, 163–186.

62. As we saw, this view was a principal target in Spinoza’s critique of Mai-monides. See the section “Maimonides” in chapter 2.

63. Cf. Strauss, PL, 118–119.

64. For this reason, Strauss rejects the popular view that the falasifa devel-oped a doctrine of a “twofold truth” (i.e., a philosophic and a religious truth). In-stead of a double truth, he argues, the falasifa acknowledge only one truth, albeitwith an outer (exoteric) and an inner (esoteric) dimension. Cf. Strauss, PL, 65–66;RCPR, 224–225.


65. Cf. Strauss, PL, 84–85, 102–103; “Eine vermißte Schrift Farâbîs,” in GS2, 99 nn. 2 and 3; Lerner and Mahdi, Medieval Political Philosophy, 172.

66. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, prefatory remarks. Cf. Strauss,PL, 95–96.

67. Quoted in Strauss, PL, 153, n. 65.

68. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, vol. 1, 17. Cf. Strauss, PAW, 47.

69. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “Leibniz von den ewigen Strafen,” in Werkein acht Bänden, vol. 7 (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979), 180. Strauss quotesthis passage in RCPR, 65, but omits the final sentence. Cf. Strauss, “Einleitung zuSache Gottes oder die gerettete Vorsehung,” in GS 2, 522: “with the ideal of contem-plation, the division (Aufspaltung) of humanity in ‘the wise’ and ‘the many’ is given,and therewith the recognition of a twofold way of communicating truths, an eso-teric and an exoteric.”

70. Lessing, “Leibniz von den ewigen Strafen,” 196. Cf. Strauss, PAW, 182.


72. Strauss, RCPR, 64. Cf. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” in GS 2,541–542:

If one pays attention to the How rather than to the What—and for Jacobi and Lessing alike, the great manner of thinking held moreweight than the recognition of this or that opinion—one will be inclined to reckon with the possibility that Jacobi was the most intelli-gent follower Lessing found among his contemporaries. . . . Jacobi felthimself to be, not entirely without justification, the legitimate heir ofLessing and the latter’s radical, i.e., undogmatic way of thinking.

Furthermore, Strauss suggests that even Jacobi did not fully fathom the extent of Less-ing’s irony, and may have become its dupe. As Strauss observes, before admitting to Ja-cobi that “there is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza,” Lessing had alreadyqualified his commitment: “If I were to name myself after anyone, then I know no onebetter.” Similarly, to Jacobi’s avowal that “my creed is not in Spinoza,” Lessing re-joined ironically: “I hope it is in no book,” that is, not even in Spinoza. See Strauss,“Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” in GS 2, 546. Referring to Jacobi’s conversation withLessing, Strauss praises the latter as “the author of the only improvised live dialogueon a philosophic subject known to me.” In the same context, looking back on Spinoza’sCritique of Religion, he states, “In this study, I was greatly assisted by Lessing,” that is, not Jacobi. See Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” in JPCM, 462. Cf. Strauss, “EineErinnerung an Lessing” (A Recollection/Reminder of Lessing), in GS 2, 607; PAW,28, 76, 182; RCPR, 63–71; the letters to Karl Löwith of July 17 and August 15, 1935,in GS 3, 657 and 661, respectively. Cf. Green, Jew and Philosopher, 23 n. 105, 14 n. 49,19 n. 78, 57–58, 165 n. 105; Clemens Kauffmann, Strauss und Rawls: Das philosophischeDilemma der Politik (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 129–141; Heinrich Meier,“Vorwort,” in GS 2, xxxiii.

73. In 1747, Lessing completed a comedy entitled Der junge Gelehrte. At thebeginning of the play, the protagonist, a young scholar, is reading Maimonides’s


Mishneh Torah (cf. Lessing, Werke, vol. 1, 282). At the end of the “Notes on Phi-losophy and Revelation” that accompany his lecture on “Reason and Revelation,”Strauss refers to “the man to whom I owe, so to say, everything I have been able todiscern in the labyrinth of that grave question: Lessing. I do not mean the Lessingof a certain tradition, the Lessing celebrated by a type of oratory, but the true andunknown Lessing” (Strauss, “Notes on Philosophy and Revelation,” in Meier, LeoStrauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 178).

74. Strauss, “Plan of a Book Tentatively Titled Philosophy and the Law,” inJPCM, 470. In the same context, Strauss announces, “While preparing the editionof Mendelssohn’s metaphysical writings for the Jubilee-Edition of Mendelssohn’sworks, I discovered some unknown material which throws new light on that con-troversy.” However, it is not clear from the text, nor does it become clear in the in-troductions what this material consists of. Although the book was never published,there is fragmentary evidence in Strauss’s Nachlaß in the University of Chicago Li-brary that he worked on an interpretation of Nathan the Wise. Cf. Leo Strauss Papers,Box 11, Folder 7.

75. Strauss, “Einleitung zu Morgenstunden,” GS 2, 535. Consider alsoStrauss’s comment on Mendelssohn’s art of writing in casting Morgenstunden as adialogue: “A dialogue is a kind of drama; a drama, being a product of poetry, is anideal presentation of nature, in specific cases an ideal presentation of real occur-rences; and art is playful, whereas life is serious” (590).

76. Plato, Apology, 23a.

77. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 93: “From this point of view the adjective ‘political’designates not so much a subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this pointof view, I say, ‘political philosophy’ means primarily not the philosophic treatmentof politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political in-troduction to philosophy.” Cf. Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg JubileeVolume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 362.


79. Cf. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 133–134; PAW, 99;“Farabi’s Plato,” 378.

80. Plato, Laws, 899d–910d. Compare Plato, Laws 905a–b and Amos 9:1–3.

81. Plato, Laws, 663d–e.

82. Ibid., 663e–664a.

83. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 152; PAW, 182; WPP, 144, 299.

84. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 129. It is perhaps no accidentthat Strauss uses Nietzschean terms to define an opposition that is transcended andsurpassed by Alfarabi’s “right mean.” See Strauss’s letter of December 7, 1933, toGerschom Scholem, in GS 3, 706–707.

85. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 129.

86. Strauss, PL, 76. Strauss’s “Farabian turn” is carefully analyzed in DanielTanguay’s excellent study Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography.


87. Alfarabi, The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, quoted in Strauss, PAW, 12.Cf. Strauss, WPP, 144: “Fârâbî may have rewritten the Laws, as it were, with a viewto the situation that was created by the rise of Islam or of revealed religion gener-ally. He may have tried to preserve Plato’s purpose by adapting the expression ofthat purpose to the new medium.”

88. Cf. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS2, 148–149; “Eine vermißteSchrift Farâbîs,” in GS 2, 101, 105; PAW, 12.

89. Cf. Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” in GS 2, 150–151; RCPR, 214.

90. Yeshayahu Leibovitz also observes that Maimonides tries to mitigateJewish messianism, while pointing out that what remains unsaid in Maimonides’swritings is as important as what is said. Cf. Yeshayahu Leibovitz, La foi de Maï-monide (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 72.

91. Cf. Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and PoliticalTeaching,” in GS 2, 199:

Now this property of law had to be imitated by Maimonides in hisphilosophic interpretation of the law. For if he had distinguished ex-plicitly between true and necessary beliefs, he would have endangeredthe acceptance of the necessary beliefs on which the authority of thelaw with the vulgar, i.e., with the great majority, rests. Consequently,he could make this essential distinction only in a disguised way, partlyby allusions, partly by the composition of his whole work, but mainlyby the rhetorical character, recognizable only to philosophers, of thearguments by which he defends the necessary beliefs.

92. Strauss, “On Abravanel’s Philosophical Tendency and Political Teach-ing,” in GS 2, 199.

93. See Strauss’s remarkable letters to Jacob Klein of January 20, February16, and July 23, 1938, in GS 3, 544–546, 548–550, and 553–554, respectively.These letters show that Strauss was keenly aware of the implications of his viewthat Maimonides “was absolutely not a Jew in his belief,” and that The Guide of thePerplexed in fact reveals the “incompatibility in principle of philosophy and Ju-daism” (GS 3, 549–550). See also Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-PoliticalProblem, 23–24.

94. Strauss, PL, 103. Cf. Daniel Tanguay, “La querelle des Anciens et desModernes et le statut de la raison pratique chez Leo Strauss,” in Carrefour 21, no. 2(1999): 21–35.

95. Denis Diderot, Pensées sur l’interpretation de la nature, xl, in Œuvres com-plètes, vol. 9 (Paris: Hermann, 1981), 69; quoted in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theo-logico-Political Problem, 58.

96. See Strauss’s letter of February 7, 1933, to Gerhard Krüger, where hedefends himself against Krüger’s objection that he takes his unbelief for granted: “Iknow nothing, but I am merely of the opinion (ich meine nur); in the first place, Iwant to figure out for myself what my opinion is (and my doxa [opinion] is atheism),what it is about, what its problems are, in order to find, by raising these questions,the road that will perhaps lead me to knowledge” (GS 3, 425).


97. Strauss, SCR, 31. As becomes apparent from a letter to Klein writtenon June 23, 1934 (GS 3, 516), Strauss was prepared to accept the consequences ofhis rediscovery:

And even if we were to be huddled into the ghetto once again andthus be compelled to go to the synagogue and to observe the law in itsentirety, then this too we would have to do as philosophers, i.e., witha reserve (Vorbehalt) that, if ever so tacit, must for that very reason beall the more determined. . . . That revelation and philosophy are atone in their opposition to sophistry, i.e., the whole of modern philos-ophy, I deny as little as you do. However, this doesn’t change any-thing regarding the fundamental difference between philosophy andrevelation: philosophy, while it may perhaps be brought under oneroof with faith, prayer and preaching, can never be brought intoagreement with them.

98. Strauss, letter of October 2, 1935, to Gerschom Scholem, in GS 3, 716.

99. Strauss’s review was reprinted in an English translation in Spinoza’s Cri-tique of Religion. All references are to this edition.

100. The importance of Strauss’s review for the understanding of Schmitt’sthought has been widely recognized. The most detailed study is Heinrich Meier’sCarl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1995). Subsequently Meier elaborated his insight in a comprehensive inter-pretation of Schmitt’s entire work: The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on theDistinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1998).


102. Ibid. 335.

103. See Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, and Leo Strauss and the Theo-logico-Political Problem, 16.

104. Cf. Strauss, CM, 33.

105. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 71, 335.

106. Ibid., 335. Cf. Strauss, CM, 2.

107. Strauss, SCR, 335–336. Cf. Strauss, “On a New Interpretation ofPlato’s Political Philosophy,” 355.

108. Ibid., 336.

109. Cf. Ibid., 339 n. 2.

110. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 326.


112. Ibid., 338.

113. Ibid., 339. Cf. Strauss, LAM, 220.


114. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, “Epistle Dedicatory.” Later on, Strauss willdefine this view as the core of Hobbes’s anthropology: “the traditional definitionimplies that man is by nature a social animal, and Hobbes must reject this implica-tion” (Strauss, WPP, 176 n. 2). Cf. Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes’ politische Wis-senschaft,” in JPCM, 453–454; SPPP, 144.

115. Aristotle, Politics, 1253a8.

116. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 184 n. 23: “According to the classics, the state of na-ture would be the life in a healthy society and not the life antedating civil society.”

117. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, II.v.13.


119. To support this point, Strauss quotes another classical source: Plu-tarch’s Life of Pyrrhus, where the Roman commander Caius Fabricius, hearing anexposition of the teaching that pleasure is the highest human good, is reported tohave said, “‘O Hercules, may Pyrrhus and the Samnites cherish these doctrines aslong as they are at war with us’” (Life of Pyrrhus, 20.4, quoted in Strauss, SCR, 342).In other words, viewed from what according to Schmitt is the political perspectivepar excellence, human dangerousness is seen to point beyond itself. Simply affirmingit thus proves to be insufficient to explain the political. In fact, Plutarch not only ex-plicitly identifies the philosophic teaching as Epicurean, but he also spells out bothits political and its theological implications. As he explains in the same passage, andas Strauss doubtless knew, the Epicureans “would have nothing to do with civil gov-ernment on the ground that it was injurious and the ruin of felicity, and . . . they removed the divine as far as possible from feelings of kindness or anger or concernfor us, into a life that knew no care and was filled with ease and comfort” (Life ofPyrrhus, 20.3). In the context of Strauss’s debate with Schmitt, this remark is notwithout significance. The Epicurean position, as described by Plutarch, is squarelyat odds with the political theology that Strauss discreetly brings to light underneathSchmitt’s position. It denies both the importance of politics and of special divineprovidence for human life, two crucial tenets of the Schmittian teaching (see Meier,Leo Straus and the Theologico-Political Problem, 77–78). Moreover, a reader of Spin-oza’s Critique of Religion like Schmitt is likely to have been aware of the influence ofEpicureanism’s apolitical hedonism and antitheism on early modern politicalthinkers such as Spinoza and Hobbes, which Strauss traces with great care (see thesection “Happiness and Ridicule: The Epicurean Connection” in chapter 2). Need-less to say, this connection deals an additional blow to Schmitt’s putative alliancewith Hobbes.

120. Another point on which Schmitt deviates from his predecessors is hissympathy, even his admiration for the amoral evil of man in the state of nature. In a review of The Concept of the Political, Helmut Kuhn calls Schmitt “an invertedRousseau,” since he offers a “predator idyll” instead of a “pastoral idyll.” See HelmutKuhn, “Besprechung von Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen,” Kant-Studien 38(1933): 190–196.


122. Ibid., 347.


123. Ibid.

124. Plato, Euthyphro, 7d.

125. Plato, Phaedrus, 263a.



128. Cf. Strauss, LAM, 207: “the political is sui generis and cannot be under-stood as derivative of the subpolitical”; LAM, 215: “the political proper, the essen-tially controversial”; RCPR, 143: “By recognizing that the political is irreducible tothe nonpolitical, that the political is sui generis, Socrates does justice to the claimraised on behalf of the political, or even by the political itself, namely by the politi-cal community, by the polis.” See also Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates (Ithaca, NY: Cor-nell University Press, 1972), 69; “Why We Remain Jews,” in JPCM, 331.

129. See Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. Because of this “affinity,” somecritics have charged Strauss with harboring authoritarian, even totalitarian sympa-thies, and of being Schmitt’s ally in a kind of neo-Hobbesian conspiracy against theWeimar Republic. Cf. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss and Leo Strauss and theAmerican Right; Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism. None of these critics, how-ever, correctly perceive the Socratic-Platonic orientation that distinguishes Straussfrom Schmitt (and Hobbes). As a result, their arguments mostly amount to imputingguilt by association and using the fallacious reasoning Strauss himself has disparagedas reductio ad Hitlerum (cf. Strauss, NRH, 42). Precisely because of his classical in-spiration, Strauss was deeply critical of the authoritarian decisionism of “revolution-ary conservatives” like Schmitt and Ernst Jünger. See Strauss, “German Nihilism,”Interpretation, 26, no. 3 (1999): 353–378; “The Living Issues of German PostwarPhilosophy,” in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 127–130.

130. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 102: “The orientation by civilizations thus appearsto be based on a remarkable estrangement from those life-and-death issues whichanimate societies and keep them in motion.”


132. Ibid., 348, 351.

133. Ibid., 351.

134. Ibid., 339 (emphasis in the original).

135. See Strauss’s letter of August 19, 1932, to Gerhard Krüger, in GS 3,399, and his letter of August 15, 1946, to Karl Löwith, in GS 3, 662–663.


137. Ibid., 348 (emphasis added).

138. Ibid., 332.

139. Ibid., 351.

140. Strauss, PL, 138 n. 2.


141. Ibid.

142. Consider the opening paragraph of Philosophy and Law: “Maimonides’rationalism is the true natural model, the standard to be carefully protected fromany distortion, and thus the stumbling block on which modern rationalism fails. Toawaken a prejudice in favor of this view of Maimonides and, even more, to arousesuspicion against the powerful opposing prejudice, is the aim of the present work”(Strauss, PL, 21).


144. Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni,” in GS 2, 412. Cf. Strauss, “Reason andRevelation,” in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 146–148.

145. Cf. Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 6–11.

Chapter 5. Socrates and the Leviathan

1. Strauss, “Einige Anmerkungen über die politische Wissenschaft desHobbes,” in GS 3, 243–261.The work under review is Zbigniew Lubienski, DieGrundlagen des ethisch-politischen Systems von Hobbes (Munich: Reinhardt, 1932). Thereview was originally written in German, and subsequently translated into Frenchby Strauss’s friend Alexandre Kojève. See the editor’s note in GS 3, 779.

2. Cf. Strauss, “Einige Anmerkungen,” in GS 3, 245. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 172.

3. Strauss acknowledges his debt for this insight to the sociologist Ferdi-nand Tönnies, who devoted several influential studies to Hobbes. See Strauss,“Einige Anmerkungen,” in GS 3, 249–250; PAW, 28 n. 10.

4. Strauss, “Einige Anmerkungen,” in GS 3, 250.

5. Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 14.


7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., 260.


10. The original German titles are Die Religionskritik des Hobbes: Ein Beitragzum Verständnis der Aufklärung and Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis.The first manuscript remained unfinished and was never published during Strauss’slifetime. The second was published in an English translation in 1936 (see chapter1). A meticulous edition of both original manuscripts by Heinrich and WiebkeMeier is now available in the third volume of Strauss’s Gesammelte Schriften.

11. Strauss, “Die Religionskritik des Hobbes,” in GS 3, 270.

12. Cf. Strauss, SPPP 231. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1095b.

13. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 1. Where the English editionreads “the ideal of life,” the German original reads “die Frage nach dem richtigen


Leben” (the question of the right life) (see GS 3, 13). In 1952, the University ofChicago Press issued an American edition (references are to this edition, henceforth“PPH”). In the preface, Strauss repeats his thesis: “the real basis of his political phi-losophy is not modern science” (ix).

14. Strauss, PPH, 5.

15. Ibid.

16. As Strauss points out, Hobbes calls the Leviathan, the contractual state,“King of the Proud.” Cf. Strauss, PPH, 13; Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 28, in fine.


18. Cf. ibid., 16. This interpretation is already adumbrated in Spinoza’s Cri-tique of Religion. Compare ibid., 16–17 and Strauss, SCR, 284 n. 95. In the samecontext, Strauss already points to the discrepancy between the anthropological basisof Hobbes’s politics and his natural science. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 284 n. 96. InStrauss’s later studies of Hobbes, the fear of violent death remains central; cf.Strauss, NRH, 186; WPP, 192.


20. Ibid., 29. Cf. Strauss, ibid., 168–170. As an example of an entirely natu-ralistic political theory, Strauss points to Spinoza, while referring the reader to hiscomparative analysis in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 192; NRH,192 n. 33.

21. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 187. In this respect, Strauss views Hobbes as a pre-cursor of Kant; cf. Strauss, PPH, 23, 54; CM, 88–89.


23. Strauss draws an interesting parallel between Hobbesian fear and Carte-sian doubt, pointing out that in fact Hobbes’s ethics are in better accord withDescartes’s basic intention than Cartesian ethics itself, with its emphasis on générosité:

Radical doubt, whose moral correlate is distrust and fear, comes earlierthan the self-confidence of the ego grown conscious of its indepen-dence and freedom, whose moral correlate is générosité. Descartes be-gins the groundwork of philosophy with distrust of his own prejudices,with distrust above all of the potential deus deceptor, just as Hobbes be-gins interpreting the State and therewith all morality by starting frommen’s natural distrust. It is, however, not Descartes’s morals, butHobbes’s, which explains the concrete meaning and the concrete im-plications of fundamental distrust. For Hobbes . . . sees the origin ofvirtue not in magnanimity, but in fear, in fear of violent death. He con-siders not magnanimity but fear of violent death as the only adequateself-consciousness. (Strauss, PPH, 56)

It is tempting to see the influence of Jacobi on this issue (see the section “The Cri-sis of the Enlightenment” in chapter 3). Cf. Strauss, NRH, 17; Manent, Naissancesde la politique moderne, 86.


24. Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 21.

25. Cf. Strauss, PPH, 118, 121; NRH, 187. On this point, Strauss refers thereader to his review of Schmitt: “Hobbes ‘prefers’ these terrors of the state of na-ture because only on awareness of these terrors can a true and permanent societyrest. The bourgeois existence which no longer experiences these terrors will endureonly as long as it remembers them. By this finding Hobbes differs from those of hisopponents who in principle share his bourgeois ideal, but reject his conception ofthe state of nature” (Strauss, PPH, 122).

26. Strauss, PPH, 27. Cf. ibid., 125.

27. Cf. ibid., 119.

28. Ibid., 34. To some extent, this instrumental approach also characterizesthe other founder of the modern liberal horizon. For Spinoza as well, philosophyis a means to achieving the supreme happiness, rather than an end in itself. See thesection “Maimonides” in chapter 2.


30. Cf. ibid., 84; OT, 228.

31. In this context, Strauss makes a statement that will prove to be far-sighted: “The reference to Machiavelli’s programme (15th chapter of Il Principe)shows the direction and the lines which further investigation of the origins of themodern interest in history should take” (Strauss, PPH, 88 n. 5). See the epilogueto this book.

32. Cf. Strauss, PPH, 104: “Hobbes considered the philosophic grounding ofthe principles of all judgement on political subjects more fundamental, incomparablymore important than the most thoroughly founded historical knowledge. . . . Thestate of nature is thus for Hobbes not an historical fact, but a necessary construction.”

33. Cf. ibid., 101; NRH, 180; SPPP, 212.

34. Cf. Strauss, PPH, 123.

35. Cf. ibid., 107, 168.

36. Cf. ibid., 81, 92–93.

37. Cf. ibid., 110; NRH, 180.

38. Ibid., 128.

39. Ibid., 81. Cf. ibid., 130.

40. Cf. Strauss, “Die Religionskritik des Hobbes,” in GS 3, 273. Cf. Meier,Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Question, 91–111.

41. Strauss, PPH, 152. Cf. ibid., 136. In an unpublished manuscript writtenin 1931 and 1932, Strauss encapsulates his fundamental objection in an exemplarymanner: “Hobbes omits (versaümt) the question without the answering of which po-litical science cannot be science. He does not begin with the question: what is the


right order of human living together?—or with the equivalent question: ti estin aretè[what is virtue?]” (quoted in GS 3, xviii). For the use of the expression “omits,”Strauss acknowledges his debt to Heidegger’s Destruktion of tradition (ibid., xix). Inthe same manuscript, Strauss observes that Hobbes’s “being caught up in the tradi-tion already determines his outset in this way, that he is unable to repeat the Socraticquestion” (Cf. Strauss, PPH, 163). When Strauss argues in Natural Right and Historythat Socrates “was as much concerned with understanding what justice is . . . as withpreaching justice,” he adds the following caveat: “For if one is concerned with under-standing the problem of justice, one must go through the stage in which justice pre-sents itself as identical with citizen-morality, and one must not merely rush throughthat stage” (Strauss, NRH, 150). Could this be an implicit censure of modern thinkerslike Hobbes and Heidegger, who rashly disparaged citizen morality and its accompa-nying understanding of justice, and who thereby “rushed” through the crucial stage?

42. On this point, Strauss is exceptionally critical: “[Hobbes’s] judgment ap-pears at first sight to be a caricature of the actual position, a caricature which was al-most inevitable, for Hobbes, as a result of his disdain for classical philosophy, didnot consider an unbiased study of the sources necessary” (Strauss, PPH, 141).

43. Strauss, PPH, 142. Cf. Strauss, letter of August 20, 1946, to KarlLöwith, in GS 3, 668; OT, 278; NRH, 124.

44. Strauss, PPH, 143–144. In a footnote to this passage, Strauss refers toPlato, Euthyphro 7b–d and Phaedrus 263a (Strauss, PPH, 143 n. 5; see also 141 n. 3).

45. A similar observation applies to Mendelssohn: in his commentary on thePantheism Controversy, Strauss relates Mendelssohn’s rejection of a paradoxicaltruth to his Cartesian distrust of ordinary language (see the section “The Crisis ofthe Enlightenment” in chapter 3).

46. One is entitled to wonder whether “ontology” includes “fundamental on-tology.” See also Strauss’s letter of December 7, 1934, to Jacob Klein, in GS 3, 534.

47. “The virtue which is not found in the works of men is found in speechalone, in the divinatory, ‘supposing’ and ‘founding’ knowledge incorporated in speech.Speech alone, and not the always equivocal deeds, originally reveals to man the stan-dard by which he can order his actions and test himself, take his bearings in life and na-ture, in a way completely undistorted, and, in principle, independent of the possibilityof realization. This is the reason for Plato’s ‘escape’ into speech, and for the theorythereby given of the transcendence of ideas; only by means of speech does man knowof the transcendence of virtue’” (Strauss, PPH, 144). Cf. Strauss, NRH, 146.

48. Plato, Republic, 549d–550a; Gorgias, 495c. Cf. Strauss, PPH, 147; CM, 88–89.

49. Strauss, PPH, 147. Plato, Laws, 631c–d. In the German manuscript, thefinal sentence reads: “In itself wisdom (die Einsicht) stands supreme, for man ( fürden Menschen), however, justice” (GS 3, 168). As Strauss explains in his letter of De-cember 12, 1932, to Gerhard Krüger, Nietzsche opposed the depreciation ofcourage by religion and modern philosophy by violently reaffirming the ancientideal of courage. His intellectual probity, however, prevented him from progress-


ing “to the unbelieving critique of this ideal,” the covert critique developed by Plato(GS 3, 414–415).

50. Cf. Plato, Apology, 23a. Cf. Seth Benardete, Socrates’ Second Sailing(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 179: “Wisdom is an idol of the cave.”


52. Ibid., 151.

53. Ibid., 153.

54. Ibid.

55. Cf. ibid., 154.

56. By the same token, Hobbes excludes the possibility of philosophicalagreement regarding the fundamental problems. Cf. Strauss, CM, 115.

57. As Strauss will later observe, the problem of sovereignty is coeval withthe problem of representation: because an irrevocable discrepancy remains betweenthe will of the sovereign and the wills of the individual citizens, the former has to beregarded as if it were the will of all and each. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 190 n. 30.

58. Strauss, PPH, 159–160.



61. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 167: “Hobbes was indebted to tradition for a single, butmomentous, idea: he accepted on trust the view that political philosophy or politicalscience is necessary.”

62. In 1935, having completed the manuscript of The Political Philosophy ofHobbes, Strauss writes to Alexandre Kojève that “it is the first attempt at a radicalliberation from the modern prejudice” (Strauss, OT, 230).

63. Strauss, “Die Religionskritik des Hobbes,” in GS 3, 272. Cf. ibid., 267, 275.

64. Ibid., 344.

65. Cf. Strauss, PPH, 75: “The fact that Hobbes accommodated not his un-belief but his utterances of that unbelief to what was permissible in a good, and, inaddition, prudent subject justifies the assumption that in the decades before theCivil War, and particularly in his humanist period, Hobbes hid his true opinionsand was mindful of the maintenance of theological conventions.”

66. Cf. Strauss, “Die Religionskritik des Hobbes,” in GS 3, 276–278, 286, 339.Cf. Strauss, PPH, 71: “Hobbes’s three presentations of political philosophy may withscarcely less justice than Spinoza’s expressly so entitled work be called theological-political treatises. Exactly as Spinoza did later, Hobbes with double intention becomesan interpreter of the Bible, in the first place in order to make use of the authority of theScriptures for his own theory, and next and particularly in order to shake the author-ity of the Scriptures.” See the section “Spinoza’s Twofold Strategy” in chapter 2.


67. Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. IV.

68. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 194.


70. Ibid., 323.

71. Ibid., 327.

72. Cf. ibid., 343.

73. Ibid., 348.

74. Ibid., 358. Cf. ibid., 362. See also Strauss’s letter of April 9, 1934, toJacob Klein, in GS 3, 496.

75. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 174–177.


77. Ibid.

78. Ibid., 270.

79. See Strauss’s letters of October 15, 1931, and November 17, 1932, toGerhard Krüger, in GS 3, 394, 404–409.


81. Strauss, letter to Gerhard Krüger of December 27, 1932, in GS 3, 416.

82. Cf. Merrill, “Christianity and Politics.”

83. The only occurrence is in a quote. Cf. Strauss, PPH, 155.

84. Ibid., 153.

85. Cf. Strauss, “Preface to Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft,” in JPCM, 454.

86. Gerhard Krüger, Philosophie und Moral in der kantischen Kritik (Tübingen:J. C. B. Mohr, 1931), 236.

87. Strauss, PL, 136 n. 2.

Chapter 6. Epilogue

1. When the Academy for the Science of Judaism encounters financial dif-ficulties in 1931, Strauss obtains a stipend of the Rockefeller Foundation, endorsedby Ernst Cassirer and Carl Schmitt. In 1932, he moves to Paris, where he conductsthe research on medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy that will culminate in Phi-losophy and Law. One year later, he relocates to England, in order to continue his research on Hobbes.

2. In 1937, Strauss briefly worked as a researcher in the Department ofHistory at Columbia University, New York City. From 1938–1948, he joined thefaculty of political science at the New School for Social Research, also in New York


City, obtaining American citizenship in 1944. In 1949, he was appointed as a pro-fessor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, wherehe stayed until his retirement in 1968. Subsequently, Strauss went to ClaremontMen’s College in California, where he taught for a year and a half, from January1968 through June 1969, after which he moved to St. John’s College in Annapolis,Maryland, until his death in 1973.

3. On this point, Strauss’s letters to Jacob Klein of the period between 1937and 1939 are fascinating and compelling reading. Cf. GS 3, 542–587.

4. Cf. Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 53–73.

5. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 126–127, 222.

6. Cf. Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 375; PAW, 182, 111 n. 45.

7. Strauss, TM, 13. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 123–124; WPP, 251. Cf. Bloom,“Leo Strauss, September 20, 1899, October 18, 1973,” in Giants and Dwarfs, 253:“the surface is the core.”

8. In his correspondence to Hans-Georg Gadamer, Strauss writes that hehas no theory of hermeneutic experience, while emphasizing the “ministerial”and “irretrievably ‘occasional’ character of every worthwhile interpretation”(Strauss, “Correspondence concerning Wahrheit und Methode,” 5–6, 11). Cf.Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 20 n. 4, 255 n. 1, 278 n. 2, 302 n. 1; Gadamer,Gesammelte Werke, 299–300, 401, 414–424, 501. See also Fortin, “Gadamer onStrauss: An Interview.”

9. Lessing, “Leibniz von den ewigen Strafen,” quoted in Strauss, “Farabi’sPlato,” 357. Cf. Strauss, PAW, 65.

10. Cf. Xenophon, On Hunting, 13.6.

11. Strauss, PAW, 60–78.

12. Strauss, WPP, 136: “the public will interpret the absolutely unexpectedspeech in terms of the customary and expected meaning of the surroundingsrather than it will interpret the surroundings in terms of the dangerous characterof the speech.”

13. Cf. Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 386–387.

14. Discussing the requirements for an adequate interpretation of Mai-monides’s The Guide of the Perplexed, Strauss characterizes his own approach as fol-lows: “Since the Guide contains an esoteric interpretation of an esoteric teaching, anadequate interpretation of the Guide would thus have to take the form of an esotericinterpretation of an esoteric interpretation of an esoteric teaching” (Strauss, PAW,56). Cf. Bloom, “Leo Strauss,” 247–248.

15. Strauss, PAW, 14. Cf. Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 375.

16. For some interpretations of Strauss’s works that take account of his art ofwriting, see Laurence Lampert, “The Argument of Leo Strauss in What Is PoliticalPhilosophy?” Modern Age, 22, no. 1 (1978): 38–46, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (Chicago:


University of Chicago Press, 1996); Seth Benardete, “Leo Strauss’ The City andMan,” Political Science Reviewer 8 (1978): 1–20; Susan Orr, Jerusalem and Athens:Reason and Revelation in the Work of Leo Strauss (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Little-field, 1995); Nathan Tarcov, “On a Certain Critique of ‘Straussianism,’” Review ofPolitics 53, no. 1 (1991): 3–18; Smith, Reading Leo Strauss.

17. Strauss met Kojève during his sojourn in Paris. A plan to collaborate on abook on the connection between Hobbes and Hegel never materialized (see Strauss,PPH, 58 n. 1). The debate between Strauss and Kojève on tyranny, the end of history,and the relationship between philosophy and politics constitutes the backdrop toFrancis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (Harmondsworth, UK: Pen-guin, 1992). Although the title captures the disagreement between Kojève andStrauss, the latter is never mentioned explicitly in the text, but only in the footnotesand the bibliography. Cf. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980); George Grant, “Tyranny and Wisdom:A Comment on the Controversy between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève,” SocialResearch 31 (1964): 45–72; Victor Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics” I and II, Review of Metaphysics 22, no. 1 (1968): 58–84 and 281–328; Dominique Auffret,Alexandre Kojève: La philosophie, L’État, la fin de l’Histoire (Paris: Grasset, 1990); RobertPippin, “Being, Time, and Politics: The Strauss-Kojève Debate,” in Idealism as Mod-ernism: Hegelian Variations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 233–261.

18. A “classic” reading of Plato along these lines is Karl Popper, The OpenSociety and Its Enemies I: The Spell of Plato (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1993).

19. Cf. Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy”;Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (New York: Routledge,1988), 187–188; John Ferrari, “Strauss’s Plato,” Arion 5, no. 2 (1997): 61–62.

20. Cf. Strauss, CM, 61–62. Cf. Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 3–31. Klein stresses theimportance of the dramatic context in interpreting Platonic dialogues, as well as thenecessity for the reader to participate in the reconstruction of this context.

21. Strauss, CM, 60. Cf. Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” inJPCM, 374.

22. Cf. Matthew 10:29.

23. James Joyce, Ulysses, ch. 9.

24. Cf. Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium,11–12.

25. Cf. Strauss, CM, 50–59; On Plato’s Symposium, 5.

26. Strauss, CM, 51.

27. Cf. Seth Benardete, The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry andPhilosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).


29. Plato, Republic, 368e.


30. Ibid., 369a.

31. Ibid., 331c–d.


33. Cf. Plato, Republic, 452a–456b. Cf. Strauss, CM, 79.

34. Cf. Plato, Republic, 238a, 354a–b. Cf. Strauss, CM, 83, 91, 109.

35. Cf. Plato, Republic, 573b–d.

36. Cf. Strauss, CM, 105, 117, 127, 133. Cf. Allan Bloom, Love and Friend-ship (New York: Simon & Schuster 1993), 440–443.

37. Plato, Republic, 414b–415c; Strauss, CM, 102.

38. Plato, Republic, 440e. Cf. Strauss, CM, 110–111; Benardete, Socrates’ SecondSailing, 93.

39. Cf. Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry, 109.

40. Plato, Republic, 473c–e.


42. Plato, Republic, 515c–516a. Cf. Strauss, CM, 128.

43. Plato, Republic, 327c. Cf. Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry, 106–107.

44. Strauss, CM, 127. Cf. Strauss, CM, 65; Benardete, Socrates’ Second Sail-ing, 149.

45. Plato, Republic, 611b–c.

46. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 39: “Socrates, then, viewed man in the light of themysterious character of the whole. He held therefore that we are more familiar withthe situation of man as man than with the ultimate causes of that situation. We mayalso say he viewed man in the light of the unchangeable ideas, i.e., of the funda-mental and permanent problems.” NRH, 150 n. 24: “Socrates was . . . concernedwith understanding what justice is, i.e., with understanding the whole complexity ofthe problem of justice.”

47. Cf. Seth Benardete, The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato’s Philebus(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), x; Ferrari, “Strauss’s Plato,” 52,56–60; Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1995), 190.

48. Cicero, On the Republic, II, 52. Cf. Strauss, SPPP, 128; CM, 138.

49. Plato, Republic, 498c–d.

50. Ibid. Cf. Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 382; WPP, 153–154; NRH, 6. Cf.Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,2001), 66–67.


51. Plato, Phaedo, 99d–e. Cf. Ronna Burger, The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 144–147, 254, n. 26. Cf. Strauss,PPH, 141–149.

52. Cf. Strauss, TM, 19: “we have learned from Socrates that the politicalthings, or the human things, are the key to the understanding of all things.”

53. Cf. Strauss, WPP, 10: “All political action has then in itself a directednesstowards knowledge of the good, or of the good society. For the good society is thecomplete political good. If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it theirexplicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, politicalphilosophy emerges.”

54. Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 103.

55. Cf. Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (New York: Basic Books, 1966),henceforth “SA.”

56. Strauss, SA, 5, 34, 50–52; RCPR, 105. Aristophanes shares the incapacityto penetrate Socrates’s enigmatic core with Alcibiades: as Strauss suggests, this maybe related to the fact that, unlike Socrates, both the poet and the politician are es-sentially dependent on the acclaim of their audience. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 221a–band Philebus, 48a–50a. Cf. Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, 137, 140, 149, 265–269. Seealso Strauss’s letter of December 12, 1938, to Jacob Klein, in GS 3, 561.

57. In the Apology, Socrates tells his audience that “many accusers have risenup against me before you,” who claimed that “there is a certain Socrates, a wiseman, a ponderer over the things in the air and one who has investigated the thingsbeneath the earth and who makes the weaker argument the stronger.” As Socratesgoes on to say, “it is not even possible to know and speak their names, except whenone of them happens to be a writer of comedies” (Plato, Apology, 18b–d). Cf.Strauss, NRH, 93; On Plato’s Symposium, 267; Harry Neumann, “Civic Piety andSocratic Atheism: An Interpretation of Strauss’ Socrates and Aristophanes,” Indepen-dent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 33–37.

58. Cf. Bloom, Love and Friendship, 477; Benardete, The Tragedy and Comedyof Life, 224.

59. Cf. Strauss, SA, 282; RCPR, 104. Cf. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 565–586.See also George Steiner, No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1996 (London: Faber andFaber 1997), 406.

60. Cf. Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, 6–7, 40–41.

61. Plato, Republic, 607b.

62. See especially Strauss’s letters to Jacob Klein from October 15, 1938, toNovember 28, 1939, GS 3, 556–587. Cf. Strauss, LAM, 34–37, 41–43; Benardete,The Argument of the Action, 415–416.

63. Cf. Strauss, “On the Intention of Rousseau,” Social Research 14, no. 4(1947): 455–87; PAW, 142–201; “The Three Waves of Modernity,” in An Intro-duction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gildin, 81–98 (De-troit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1975).


64. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 15. Cf. Strauss, SCR, 321–323.

65. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, preface.

66. Machiavelli, letter to Francesco Guicciardini of May 17, 1521, quoted inKauffmann, Strauss und Rawls, 127. Introducing the first book of the Discourses,Machiavelli tells his addressee: “And even if this enterprise may be difficult,nonetheless, aided by those who have advised me to begin carrying this load, I be-lieve I can carry it so that there will remain for others a short way to bring it to its destinedplace” (emphasis added).

67. Strauss, TM. Cf. Claude Lefort, Le travail de l’œuvre Machiavel (Paris:Gallimard, 1972); Kim A. Sorensen, Discourses on Strauss: Revelation and Reason inLeo Strauss and His Critical Study of Machiavelli (Notre Dame, IN: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2006).

68. Cf. Strauss, “Machiavelli and Classical Literature,” Review of NationalLiteratures 1, no. 1 (1970): 7–25. See also Strauss’s letter to Karl Löwith of August15, 1946, in GS 3, 661. See the section “Spinoza’s Twofold Strategy” in chapter 2and the section “Fighting the Kingdom of Darkness” in chapter 5.

69. Cf. Strauss, TM, 31.

70. Ibid., 294.

71. Ibid., 295.

72. Cf. Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, 230. In the fourteenth chapter of ThePrince, Machiavelli advises his addressee to imitate the models of antiquity, in par-ticular the Persian ruler Cyrus and “those things which have been written of Cyrusby Xenophon.” However, Machiavelli fails to see the profound critical irony inXenophon’s depiction of Cyrus, as well as the fact that Cyrus is only one of the twofoci of Xenophon’s field of vision, the other of which is Socrates. Cf. Strauss, TM,290–291. Cf. Christopher C. Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in theCyropaedeia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

73. Strauss, TM, 295.

74. Strauss, WPP, 44. Cf. Daniel Tanguay, “‘Colère anti-théologique’ etsécularisation: quelques remarques sur l’interprétation straussienne de la rupturemoderne,” Science et Esprit 52, no. 2 (1999): 185–197.

75. Cf. Strauss, TM, 297; WPP, 44–46.

76. Strauss, PAW, 15.

77. Cf. Strauss, TM, 202–203.

78. Strauss, WPP, 127.

79. Cf. Aron, introduction to Le savant et le politique, 31–52; Helmut Kuhn,“Naturrecht und Historismus,” Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978): 13–21; LucFerry, Philosophie Politique 1 Le Droit: La nouvelle querelle des anciens et des modernes(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984). But see Kennington, “Strauss’s Nat-ural Right and History,” 57–86, and Terence Marshall, “Leo Strauss, la philosophie et


la science politique” (1) and (2), Revue française de science politique 35, no. 4 (1985):605–638 and 35, no. 5 (1985): 801–838.

80. Strauss, NRH, 120.

81. Ibid., 144. In the same context, Strauss once again points to the ambigu-ity of the Platonic dialogues: “Many interpreters of Plato do not sufficiently con-sider the possibility that his Socrates was as much concerned with understandingwhat justice is, i.e., with understanding the whole complexity of the problem of jus-tice, as with preaching justice” (ibid., 150 n. 24).


83. Strauss, FPP, 74.

84. Interestingly enough, on this point Strauss quotes Lessing, who warnsagainst identifying “the goal of our thinking with the point at which we have be-come tired of thinking” (Lessing, letter to Mendelssohn of January 9, 1771, quotedin Strauss, NRH, 22). During his early investigations on Hobbes, Strauss wrote a“preface to a projected book on Hobbes,” in which he took to task two prominentlegal theorists and critics of natural right: Hans Kelsen and Carl Bergbohm. Bothof these authors, he argued, commit the historicist fallacy of concluding the impos-sibility of natural right from the historical failure of the quest for natural right, outof intellectual probity. See Strauss, “Vorwort zu einem geplanten Buch überHobbes,” in GS 3, 201–215. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 4, 10.

85. Cf. Strauss, NRH, 13, 18, 26–28, 64–66

86. Cf. Strauss, SPPP, 176–181, 188.

87. Cf. Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” in JPCM, 472: “thosewho lacked the courage to face the issue of Tyranny, who therefore et humiliterserviebant et superbe dominabantur [themselves obsequiously subservient while arro-gantly lording it over others], were forced to evade the issue of Being as well, pre-cisely because they did nothing but talk of Being.” See also Meier, Leo Strauss andthe Theologico-Political Problem, 45–51, 105–106.

88. See Strauss’s letters of August 11, 1960, November 22, 1960, and Novem-ber 17, 1972, to Gerschom Scholem, in GS 3, 740, 742, 765.

89. Strauss, NRH, 74. Strauss offers a lengthy and profound meditation onthis alternative in a lecture on “Reason and Revelation” he gave in 1948 at theHartford Theological Seminary. In the lecture, he makes extensive use of his find-ings in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. The lecture is published in Meier, Leo Straussand the Theologico-Political Problem, 141–180, esp. 150–155.

90. The Christian point of view is fittingly encapsulated by Eric Voegelin:“The qui est [he who is] is the name most appropriate for God, because it does notrefer to specific forms of immanent being” (Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis [München:Piper Verlag, 1966], 338; cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, XIII, 11). Cf.Strauss, SPPP, 122, 162–163, 166, 170; RCPR, 256–257; “On the Interpretation ofGenesis,” 6, 16–20.


91. Strauss, CM, 241. See also ibid., 98, where Strauss refers to “the grav-ity of the failure to raise and answer the question ‘what is a God?’ or ‘who are thegods?’” See also Strauss, OT, 109; Xenophon’s Socrates, 118; SA, 53. See also Meier,Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 25–27 n. 42. Cf. Benardete, “LeoStrauss’ The City and Man,” 1.


93. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 246–252.

94. Strauss, PAW, 114.

95. Cf. Strauss, SPPP, 232. In “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” Straussshows that Genesis begins with the disparagement of the two themes that are char-acteristic of philosophy: the investigation of the heavens and the knowledge of goodand evil. Cf. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theo-logico-Political Problem, 147, 162. See also Thomas L. Pangle, Political Philosophy andthe God of Abraham (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

96. Cf. Strauss, RCPR, 258–260; “Reason and Revelation,” 178.


98. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” 141–180.

99. Seth Benardete, Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Be-nardete, ed. Ronna Burger, 176–178 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

100. Strauss, RCPR, 206. This passage concludes Strauss’s interpretation ofPlato’s Euthyphro, in which the problem of piety is central.


yanulada


Bibliography

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The City and Man. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964.

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241

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Liberalism Ancient and Modern. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

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“Machiavelli and Classical Literature.” Review of National Literatures, 1, 1 (1970): 7–25.

Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.

“On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History.” Review of Metaphysics 5, no. 4 (1952):559–586.

“On the Intention of Rousseau.” Social Research 14, no. 4 (1947): 455–487.

“On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy.” Social Research 13, no. 3(1946): 326–367.

On Plato’s Symposium. Edited and with a foreword by Seth Benardete. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2001.

On Tyranny: Revised and Expanded Edition—Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspon-dence. Edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth. New York: FreePress, 1991.

Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952.

Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and his Predeces-sors. Translated and with an introduction by Eve Adler. Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1995.

The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. Translated by Elsa M. Sin-clair. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1936; reprint, Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1952.

“Reason and Revelation.” In Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem by Hein-rich Meier, 141–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss. Selectedand introduced by Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1989.

Socrates and Aristophanes. New York: Basic Books, 1966.

Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Translated by Elsa M. Sinclair. New York: SchockenBooks, 1965.

Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. With an introduction by Thomas L. Pangle.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958.

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“The Three Waves of Modernity.” In An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essaysby Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gildin, 81–98. Detroit.MI: Wayne State Univer-sity Press, 1975.

What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959.

Xenophon’s Socrates. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972.

Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the Oeconomicus. Ithaca, NY: Cor-nell University Press, 1970.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 249

yanulada


Index

Academy for the Science of Judaism(Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Juden-tums), 37, 202n18

action, 155Adler, Cyrus, 218n21Aeschylus, 187aesthetics, 134agreement, 120–21, 140–41, 144Alcibiades, 236n56Alexander of Aphrodisias, 102Alfarabi (al-Farabi), 112, 128–31, 175–76,

184, 189–90, 218n23, 222n84, 223n87; oninner and outer meaning of the law, 128

allegorical exegesis, 55, 60, 109, 123Alphakar, Jehudah, 54anarchism, 139animal sociale (social animal), 135, 137,

225n114anti-Semitism, 9–10antitheism, 80, 83, 225n119appearance, 163appetite, 154–55apikorsuth, see EpicureanismAquinas, Thomas, 54, 109Arendt, Hannah, 2Aristophanes, 185–86, 236n56; Assembly of

Women, 186; Clouds, 185–86Aristotle, 51, 54–56, 58, 60, 97, 109–11,

113–15, 119, 132, 137, 153, 156–57,159–61, 166, 170, 208n128, 212n43,215n98; Politics, 113–14, 219n31

Aron, Raymond, 4art, 169, 181, 186, 222n75artfulness, 169art of writing, 3, 123, 147, 174–77 passim,

187–89, 222n75, 233n16. See also esotericand exoteric communication

assimilation, 9–11, 13, 17, 26–29, 72–73, 95atheism, 10, 69, 79–80, 84, 93, 223n96; from

probity, 93–97, 104, 106, 132, 145, 191–92Athens, 192–94attributes, 23, 57, 85–86autonomy, 15, 79, 86, 92Averroës (Ibn Rushd), 112, 123, 125, 190;

Decisive Treatise, 123Avicenna (ibn S¹na), 112, 116, 124, 126,

218n19, 219n19, 218n23, 219n37; On theParts of the Sciences, 113

Baal, 46, 52Bacon, Francis, 136, 158Barth, Karl, 20Bauer, Bruno, 208n129Being, 78, 110, 192, 238n87, 238n90; as

corporality and resistance, 169Bellow, Saul, 195n4Bergbohm, Carl, 238n84best regime (aristè politeia), 113, 117,

121–22, 127, 130, 162, 180–81, 184, 186,190, 218n23, 236n53

Bible, 18–21, 28–29, 32, 38, 40, 43–45, 51,53–55, 58, 62–64, 70–72, 93, 103, 167,192, 194, 203n42, 203n43, 203n45,214n91, 219n35, 231n66; denial of auton-omy of reason in, 47; literal meaning of,37, 45, 55; rational moral precepts in, 44

biblical history, 19, 23, 35biblical science, 28, 36–38, 40–41, 51, 55,

72–73Blijenbergh, Willem van, 207n110Bloom, Allan, 1, 5, 195n4body, 112; abstraction from in Plato’s

Republic, 181–83Boxel, Hugo, 208

251

Brague, Rémi, 5Breuer, Isaac, 10Buber, Martin, 20–21, 23–24, 29, 30; and

‘eclipse of God’, 24; Hasidic tales of, 24; Iand Thou, 21, 23

Bultmann, Rudolf, 20

Calvin, John, 54, 61–66 passim, 168; dis-tinction between profane and numinousfear by, 63, 66–67, 207n115; Institutes ofthe Christian Religion, 62

Calvinism, 67, 219n35Cassirer, Ernst, 209n3, 232n1causality, 38, 68charity, 35, 40, 44, 57Christian Aristotelianism, 115, 165Christianity, 32–34, 84, 152–53, 166, 170–71,

189Cicero, 184civilization, 92, 136, 142, 146, 169, 188,

226n130; as bourgeois ideal, 151, 229n25Cohen, Hermann, 20–23, 31–37, 66–67, 90,

109–11, 114–15, 119–20, 133, 202n16,202n18, 206n105, 209n3

communism, 171conscience, 62, 151, 155, 171consciousness, 168–69conservatism, 84, 116Conspectivism, 213n70corporality, 35, 102, 169, 204n51cosmos, 65, 157, 206n96courage, 156, 162, 170, 193, 203n49creation, 38, 46, 56, 58, 60, 63–64, 86,

213n66critique of religion, 11–12, 16, 19–20,

22–23, 26–29, 37–39, 42, 51–52, 61, 66,68–72, 75, 90–92, 97, 130, 165–67, 169,204n51; as basis of biblical science, 37–39

culture, 13–14, 69, 79, 92; classical conceptof, 137, 138; modern concept of, 134–35,137, 142, 146, 158, 188

Cyrus, 237n72

Da Costa, Uriel, 208n129death, 67, 138, 228n18, 228n23; as summum

malum (greatest evil), 151, 155decisionism, 84, 89, 143–44, 191, 226n129Democritus, 208n128Descartes, René, 51, 56, 78, 80–81, 83, 88,

97, 168; critique of Aristotelianism andscholasticism, 51, 56, 97, 213n66; deus de-ceptor, 168, 228n23; ego cogitans, 205n73;générosité, 228n23; mathesis universalis,

161, 230n45; radical doubt, 51, 78–79, 84,96, 168, 228n23

desertion, 156desire, 151despotism, 80destiny, 143determinism, 63, 79Diderot, Denis, 132disenchantment, 93disobedience, 62divine call, 24divine election, 14, 16–17, 35divine intellect, 55, 57, 59, 202n26divine intervention, 47, 49, 63divine omnipotence, 62, 92divine substance, 57–58divine will, 38, 57, 67, 202n26, 207n116dogma, 15–16doxa. See opinionDreyfus Affair, 10Dubnow, Simon, 18–19, 23, 26duty, 141

economics, 140, 151, 218n19Eindeutschung (Germanization), 13Einwirklichung (return to reality), 12–13, 16,

72Elijah, 46, 52emancipation, 10, 26, 72–73Enlightenment, 3, 19–20, 22, 28–30, 35, 37,

51, 68–69, 71, 75–85, 88–90, 91–94,96–98, 103–105, 107, 110, 116, 131, 151,153, 188, 209n135, 213n66, 219n35; me-dieval Jewish, 109–10, 131; moderatemodern, 21, 26, 78, 85, 89, 125; modernJewish, 20; radical modern, 20, 30, 51, 76,85, 90; Napoleonic strategy of, 91, 168,189; will to happiness of, 69, 92; will toimmediacy of, 52, 83

enmity, 161Entwirklichtheit (lack of reality), 12Epicureanism, 10, 66–70, 74, 82, 86, 90,

92–93, 130, 167, 187, 225n119Epicurus, 67–69, 90, 92–93, 208n128,

225n119epistemology, 9, 80eros, 96, 100, 171, 191; as love of one’s own,

182; abstraction from in Plato’s Republic,182–83

esoteric and exoteric communication,123–26, 129, 132, 162, 220n64, 221n69,233n14. See also art of writing

eternity, 60

252 INDEX

ethics, 79, 110–11, 150, 166, 218n19Ethics (Spinoza) 38–39, 40, 46, 48, 57, 65,

82, 206n95, 206n98, 210n17; reduction-ism in, 65

Euripides, 187evil, 62, 239n95; natural, 136, 225n120; as

dangerousness, 138–39, 154, 225n119existentialism, 20experience, 47, 50–52, 204n52

falasifa (philosophers), 112–15, 122–28,131–33, 146, 153, 166, 172, 174, 190,218n18, 218n21, 219n31, 219n38; doctrine of “twofold truth” of, 220n64;Platonism of, 115–18

Farabi. See Alfarabifatalism, 79, 80, 84fate of philosophy, 100, 191fear, 39, 63, 66, 68, 70, 82, 151–52, 155–57,

167, 228n18Feuerbach, Ludwig, 208n129Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 13folk spirit (Volksgeist), 13–14, 25force, 155freedom, 28, 50, 51, 63, 96, 98–99, 136,

207n116French Revolution, 12Freud, Sigmund, 212n51friendship, 144Fukuyama, Francis, 17

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 212n46,215–16n103, 233n8

Galilei, Galileo, 160galut (exile), 10–18 passim, 26–29Genesis, 239n95German Idealism, 21goyim (non-Jews), 15grace, 62–64Guicciardini, Francesco, 237n66Guttmann, Julius, 37, 202n20

Ha’am, Ahad (Asher Ginzberg), 10happiness, 67, 69–70, 86, 123, 128, 169,

193, 225n119, 229n28hedonism, political, 69, 91–92; apolitical,

225n119Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm, 13, 30,

234n17Hegelianism, 30, 198n22Heidegger, Martin, 5, 93–94, 100, 105–6,

171, 190–91, 215n98, 229–30n41; anxiety(Angst), 94; destruction of tradition

(Destruktion), 105, 229–30n41; forgetful-ness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit), 190;thrownness (Geworfenheit), 93–94

Heine, Heinrich, 9hermeneutics, 3–4, 38, 54Herodotus, 187Herzl, Theodor, 9–11, 197n10; The Jewish

State (Der Judenstaat), 9; Old New Land(Altneuland ), 197n10

Hesiod, 187heteronomy, 81, 83Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 10historical consciousness, 13, 50, 69, 71, 89,

101, 168, 191; critique of, 102, 104, 106,108

historical research, 48historicism, 2, 88–89, 144, 147, 171, 190–91historiography, 157–58history, 74, 157–59, 171, 188; end of, 234n17Hitler, Adolf, 173Hobbes, Thomas, 7, 57, 77, 80, 115–16, 133,

135–39, 142, 145–46, 149–73 passim,187–89, 203n42, 206n96, 208n129,211n36, 226n129, 227n3, 228n16,228n21, 228n23, 229n25, 229n32,229–30n41, 230n42, 231n56, 231n61,231n65, 231n66, 232n1, 234n17, 238n84;antithesis of vanity and fear of, 151–52,156, 163–64; anti-traditional tendency(Tendenz) of, 150; asserts primacy of rightover obligation, 155, 165; claim to greaterprofundity of, 152, 170; critique ofcourage by, 162; critique of religion by,166, 168–69; discovery of Cartesianmethod, Euclidean geometry and Galileanscience by, 160, 163–64; Epicurean motive of, 167, 225n119; failure to raiseSocratic question of, 159–61, 164–65,229–30n41; historical critique of, 167;naturalism of, 150, 153–55; natural lawdoctrine of, 152, 156; moral basis of H.’sphilosophy, 153–54; on aristocratic virtue,156; on impotence of reason, 159; polemicagainst Christianity of, 153; ‘purist’ cri-tique of, 166–67; refounding of moralityby, 154, 156, 158, 165; rejects spirit-mat-ter dualism, 166–67; state absolutism of,139; tension between anthropological andnaturalistic orientation in, 154; turn tohistory of, 157–59, 229n31; twofold strat-egy of, 166–67, 203n42, 231n66; under-stands Being as corporality, 168; De Cive,166, 225n114; Leviathan, 80, 166, 206n95

INDEX 253

Hochkultur (high culture), 13Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich von,

208n129Homer, 187humanity, 138, 141Hume, David, 80, 208n129humilitas (humility), 151, 155

Ibn Rushd. See AverroësIbn S¹na. See AvicennaIdeas, 110, 161, 170, 184, 230n47, 235n46ignorance, 79, 88, 99, 102, 157, 162,

214n76; radical vs. natural, 105–6illusion, 69, 93imagination, 55–56incarnation, 144individualism, 26, 92intention, 155interest in revelation, 63, 72internalization, 21, 26, 30irrational, 22–23Islam, 112, 116, 128, 130, 223n87Israel, 16, 53, 110–11, 115–16

Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Ze’ev), 198n23Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 77–97 passim,

221n72, 228n23; accusation ofSchwärmerey (enthusiasm) against, 88;concept of natural certainties of, 78–79;doctrine of Glaube of, 80–83, 87, 89, 92;heteronomy according to, 81; historicismof, 88; knowledge of ignorance accordingto, 80; renewal of philosophy accordingto, 81; salto mortale of, 80, 83; traditition-alism and conservatism of, 89; transcen-dence of reality according to, 79, 81

Jelles, Jarig, 206n97Jeremiah, 63Jerusalem, 192–94Jesus, 44Jewish nation, 9, 25, 74Jewish Question, 8, 10, 14, 16, 23, 28, 30,

72–74, 194Jewish state, 10–11, 14, 29, 73Jewish tradition, 10, 12–13Jewish content, 10, 13, 16, 26Jonas, Hans, 5Joshua, 207n116Judaism, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20–23, 26–28, 32,

34, 36, 54, 58, 60, 67, 71–74, 85, 87, 112,115, 206–7n105, 211n39, 223n93; en-lightened, 110; historicization of, 198n22

Jünger, Ernst, 226n129jurisprudence, 128justice, 24, 86–87, 141, 150, 156, 161–62,

180–82, 184, 188, 189–90, 206n96, 219n35,229–30n41, 230n49, 235n46, 238n81

Kant, Immanuel, 19, 79, 81, 92, 228n21Kantianism, 21Kelsen, Hans, 238n84Klein, Jacob, 18, 212n59, 214n80, 223n93,

224n97, 230n46, 232n74, 233n3, 234n20,236n56, 236n62

knowledge, 44, 78, 80–81, 86, 99, 123, 143,144, 152, 168, 181, 157, 211n39, 223n96,230n47, 239n95; of ignorance, 88, 119

Kojève, Alexandre, 178, 227n1, 231n62,234n17

Koran, 114, 123, 129, 219n35Krüger, Gerhard, 74, 91, 95, 170, 172,

202n20, 204n52, 208n126, 212n46,212n54, 212n57, 223n96, 226n135,230n49, 232n79, 232n81

Kuhn, Helmut, 225n120

Labor Question, 9La Peyrère, Isaac, 208n129Latin Averroism, 190law, divine, 59, 87, 112, 115, 127, 129, 130,

162, 164–65, 193–94, 205n73; human, 58,155, 157; natural, 58, 115–16, 133, 152,156, 190; of nature, 56, 150, 206n98; re-vealed, 10, 15–16, 24–26, 28–29, 32, 35,57, 58–60, 71, 82–83, 112–14, 117, 123,127, 131, 192, 202n28, 207n113, 223n91,224n97. See also nomos and theioi nomoi

lawgiver, 59, 112, 129, 202n28. See alsoprophet

leap of faith, 24, 75learning through reading (lesendes Lernen),

106–7, 132, 174Lefort, Claude, 4legalism, 207n113Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 86–87, 125,

219n35; Causa Dei, 86, 125; Théodicée, 125Leibovitz, Yeshayahu, 223n90Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 84–85, 90,

125–126, 142, 166, 175, 198–99n30,209n135, 221n72, 221–22n73, 238n84;“theatre logic” of, 125; The Young Scholar(Der junge Gelehrte), 221n73; Nathan theWise (Nathan der Weise), 126

liberal democracy, 2, 4, 9, 20, 28

254 INDEX

liberalism, 10, 26, 80, 133–34, 136–37, 139,142–47, 149, 151, 173, 203n42

lie, 129; noble, 182, 184Livy, 188Locke, John, 187logic, 218n19love, 63, 186; of truth, see erosLöwith, Karl, 197n2, 205n74, 212n57,

213n66, 213n73, 215n93, 215n95,216n104, 216n108, 221n72, 226n135,230n44, 237n68

Lubienski, Zbigniew, 227n1Lucretius, 187, 208n128

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 58, 158, 187–91,212n51; political realism of, 58; forges al-liance between philosophy and politics,188–89; motivated by anti-theological ire,189; Discourses on Livy, 188, 237n66; ThePrince, 187–88, 229n31, 237n72

Maimonides, Moses (Moshe ben Maimon),54–61, 63, 102–4, 108, 109–19 passim,122–27 passim, 131, 133, 153, 212n43,218n21, 220n62, 223n90, 223n91,227n142; as Platonist, 110, 223n93;Guide of the Perplexed, 54, 102, 112,123–24, 133, 219n37, 221–22n73,223n93, 233n14; Letter on Astrology,207n114

Manent, Pierre, 4Mannheim, Karl, 213n70Marsilius of Padua, 189–90Marx, Karl, 208n129mathematics, 161, 163megalopsuchia (magnamimitas), 156, 228n23Meier, Heinrich, 174, 202n20, 216n104,

224n100Mendelssohn, Moses, 78–97 passim, 105,

109, 211n28, 211n36, 211n39, 212n43,222n74, 222n75, 230n45; natural theol-ogy of, 85–87, 97, 125–26, 133; doctrineof “common sense” of, 87–88, 92,211n39; Phädon, 86; Sache Gottes, oder dieGerettete Vorsehung, 86

messiah, 15, 17, 74, 131messianism, 223n90metaphysics, 51, 85–88, 96, 105, 140, 157,

218n19, 219n41miracles, 20, 26, 41, 45–50, 52, 56, 60,

64–65, 67, 70–71, 81, 92, 166–67, 169,204n51, 204n52, 205n79

moderation (sôphrosunè), 162, 186, 188

modernity, 2, 29, 30, 51, 142, 213n69,216n104

Momigliano, Arnaldo, 5morality, 78–79, 89, 94, 106, 110, 114–15,

134, 140, 142, 145, 155–58, 160, 165,193, 228n23, 229–30n41

Moses, 44, 48–49, 112, 131

nationalism, 13naturalism, 130nature, 46–49, 56–57, 63–64, 70, 135, 137,

143, 145, 157, 165–66, 168–70, 181,184–85, 188, 193, 205n73, 222n75;human, 58, 135, 137, 154–55, 171

neoconservatism, 4neo-Kantianism, 20–21, 31neoorthodoxy, Jewish, 10, 14–16, 25;

Christian, 20new thinking (Rosenzweig), 21Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1, 93–94,

97–98, 100, 105–7, 171, 191, 212n51,213n66, 216n108, 222n84, 230n49; eter-nal return (ewige Wiederkehr), 213n66;Will to Power, 93, 98, 213n66

nihilism, 80nobility, 193nomos (law), 115, 133, 146, 219n33; and phu-

sis (nature), 185. See also lawnon-philosophers, 57, 123–24, 126, 131nothingness, 78

obedience, 33, 40, 44–45, 52, 60, 81, 89,131, 159, 192–93, 207n113

obligation, 155, 165obscurantism, 88Old Comedy, 185Oldenburg, Henry, 47ontology, 161, 171, 230n46opinion, 96–97, 102, 120–22, 130, 152,

160–62, 164, 223n96, 231n65ordinary language, 88, 97, 161, 164–65orthodoxy, 45–47, 49, 52, 68, 70–71, 75–76,

90–96, 103, 125, 168, 189, 192,198–99n30, 209n135; Jewish, 16, 23,25–29, 35, 59, 63–64, 72, 74, 130, 132,212n59; Protestant, 33, 39, 44–45, 67, 69

Otto, Rudolf, 20–23, 207n113; The Holy, 22

Pantheism Controversy, 78, 80, 84, 90, 92–93,96–97, 209n4, 211n28, 219n35, 230n45

passions, 57–58, 67, 158, 163, 166, 188,206n98

INDEX 255

Paul, 32, 35, 40, 44, 115, 207n113peace, 32, 68, 140, 142perfectibility, 86perfection, 69persecution, 3petitio principii, 45, 55, 61–62, 70, 72phenomenology, 20philology, 215n102philosopher, 111–12, 117, 129, 131physics, 218n19physiology, 161piety, 32, 35, 57, 62–63, 66, 72, 239n100Plato, 81, 86, 98, 100–101, 109, 111,

113–14, 116–19, 122, 124, 127, 130–33,141, 146, 152–53, 160–63, 165, 170–72,174, 177–80, 186–87, 194, 208n128,218n22, 218n23, 226n129; as Socratic,118–19, 122; dialogues of, 107, 119, 122,178, 187, 238n81; dialogues of as drama,179–80, 234n20; refuge into speech of,161, 230n47; simile of the cave of, 100,103–4, 108, 113, 172, 189, 216n106,231n50; Apology, 100, 119, 126, 236n57;Euthyphro, 149, 239n100; Laws, 113, 114,128, 130, 179, 218n21, 223n87; Phaedo,86, 184; Phaedrus, 140; Republic, 111,180–84, 186, 189–90; Statesman, 218n21;Symposium, 186

Plutarch, 225n119poetry, 186–87, 222n75, 236n56pogroms, 9–10political idealism, 183political philosophy, 113, 133, 140, 144–47,

152, 157, 165–66, 174, 185, 192, 222n77,231n61

politics, 23, 27, 31, 32, 34, 57, 59, 60,78–79, 110–11, 142, 146–47, 150–51,160, 163, 166, 170, 173, 184, 186–87,189, 218n19, 218n23, 219n41, 234n17

Popper, Karl, 234n18positivism, 2, 190–91power, 58, 151, 157, 164, 169, 204n52,

206n97, 207n116; dualism of, 166, 170practical reason, 131, 188praxis, 157precepts, 158–59predestination, 38, 63prejudice, 39–40, 43, 50, 52, 55, 60, 62, 68,

70–71, 99, 157, 165, 169, 203n43,227n142, 231n62; as historical category,50–51, 89, 96, 204n69, 215n101; critiqueof, 102–4, 106–7

present, 51

pride, 62, 80, 154, 166probity, 27, 93–94, 100, 132, 171, 212n57,

230n49, 238n84. See also atheismprogress, 15, 47, 50, 56, 70–71, 96, 98, 101,

116, 158, 215n101, 216n104prophecy, 34–35, 46, 55, 81, 111–13, 167,

205n88, 217n14, 218n21prophet, 24, 35, 39, 52, 59, 111–12, 117,

123, 127, 218n23; unarmed, 189. See alsolawgiver

prophetology, 55, 60, 111–14, 117, 127–29,131, 205n88, 219n37

Protestantism, 33, 43, 59providence, 14, 19, 49, 59, 64, 86–87,

128–29, 213n66Pufendorff, Samuel von, 138Pythagoras, 124

quaestio iuris (Rechtsfrage), 27, 29, 35, 42, 71,74, 95, 142

quarrel between philosophy and poetry, 186quarrel between the ancients and the mod-

erns (querelle des anciens et des modernes),97, 107–8, 178, 217n109

quid sit deus (what is a god), 192, 239n91

radicalism, 170raison d’état, 58Rambam. See Maimonidesrationalism, classical, 109, 132, 164–65,

227n142; modern, 22, 75, 78–85, 87, 92,132, 227n142

rationality, 57, 75, 164rational morality, 40, 44reason, 35–36, 39–40, 43–45, 47–57, 59–65,

87, 97, 151, 155, 163–64, 167–68, 183,211n39; sufficiency vs. insufficiency of,61, 63, 65, 70–72

Reformation, 219n35regulative idea, 21, 79Reinharz, Jehudah, 11relativism, 2, 99religion, 16, 28, 96, 103–4, 108, 146, 152,

168, 171, 173, 186–89, 193–94, 203n42,230n49; as postulate, 19; natural, 85

religious a priori, 21, 204n51religious consciousness, 22representation, 231n57return movement (Rückkehrbewegung), 20, 82revelation, 17, 21, 38–39, 41, 44–46, 52–53,

56–57, 59–60, 64–65, 83, 86–87, 89, 91,95, 103, 111–14, 116–17, 130–31, 144,167, 192–93, 204n51, 224n97

256 INDEX

rhetoric, 184–85ridicule, 70–71, 91right, 58, 86–87, 136, 141, 155; natural,

190–91, 206n96, 206n97, 238n84; of man,205n73; of nature, 150–51, 155–56, 164–65

Rimbaud, Arthur, 31rishus (viciousness), 9Romanticism, 22, 31, 77, 94, 116Rosenzweig, Franz, 20–21, 23–25, 29–30,

37, 202n18; on biblical commandmentsand prohibitions, 25; on revealed law, 25;new thinking of, 21, 25, 30; radical em-piricism of, 21, 24; Hegel and the State(Hegel und der Staat), 21; “It is Time”(Zeit ists), 202n18

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 187, 225n120

sanhedrin, 32Scheler, Max, 83Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 215n102Schmitt, Carl, 133–47 passim, 149, 155,

172, 224n100, 225n119, 225n120,226n129, 229n25, 232n1; against neutral-ization of the political 133, 140–41, 143;Christian faith of, 145; friend-foe distinc-tion of, 133, 143; inverted liberalism of,143; moral stance of, 138–40; notion ofErnstfall (case of emergency) of, 134; onmoral seriousness, 139–40, on the orderof human things, 143; theological founda-tion of S.’ position, 144; Political Theology,139; The Concept of the Political, 133,144–45, 147, 172;

scholasticism, 51, 157, 168, 171, 219n38Scholem, Gerschom (Gerhard), 133,

219n38, 224n98, 238n88science, 18–19, 27, 37, 64, 68–70, 77, 84,

90–92, 94–95, 136, 150, 153, 157, 166,168, 192, 200n52, 214n91, 227–28n13,228n18

scientific method, 163scientific observation, 47Scripture. See Biblesecond cave, 103–4, 107–8, 132, 171–72,

189, 216n106, 216n107security, 140, 142, 169self-consciousness, 151, 155, 159self-emancipation, 10self-knowledge, 51, 62self-love, 62, 162self-mastery. See moderationself-preservation, 39, 136, 155–57, 202n31Shakespeare, William, 149

sin, 62–63, 144, 149, 151, 207n113social contract, 155Social Question, 9Socrates, 86, 98, 100–101, 106, 113–14,

119–22, 124–26, 130, 140–41, 146,152–53, 160, 171, 172–89, 190–91, 194,208n128, 226n129, 229–30n41, 235n46,236n52, 236n57, 237n72, 238n81; irony(eironeia) of, 186–87; knowledge of igno-rance of, 119–20; “second sailing” of, 184

Socratic dialectic, 161, 163, 171, 185Socratic question, 100–101, 103, 105–9,

117–19, 127, 130–32, 140–42, 144–45,147, 154, 171–73, 175, 184, 187–88,190–91, 193, 227–28n13; as a politicalquestion, 119–22, 141, 153, 158–59, 160,164–65, 170, 189, 216n108

Sokratesvergessenheit (forgetfulness ofSocrates), 190

Solomon, 44Sombart, Werner, 83sophist, 130sophistry, 224n97Sophocles, 187soul, 44, 58–59, 67–68, 112, 114, 129, 171,

182–83, 186, 188; immortality of, 86, 88,125; parallelism with city in Plato’s Re-public, 182–84

sovereignty, 164, 231n57speech, 161, 230n47Spengler, Oswald, 213n71Spinoza, Baruch, 7, 28, 31–76 passim,

77–78, 80, 87–88, 95, 104, 109, 115, 138,142, 146–47, 152, 154, 158, 166, 187–89,203n42, 206n97, 207n113, 207n114,207n115, 208n123, 208n128, 212n46,212n51, 220n62, 221n72, 228n20,229n28, 231n66; doctrine of natural rightof, 206n96; Epicurean motive of, 34, 67,69, 71, 82–83, 225n119; excommunica-tion of, 29, 202n16, 206–7n105; neutral-ity of, 73; on autonomy of reason, 33–35;on freedom of philosophizing, 32, 35, 39,59; on intellectual love of God (amor in-tellectualis Dei), 57, 63. See also Ethics andTheological-Political Treatise

Spinozism, 80, 84, 90, 97spiritedness (thumos), 183state, 58, 114, 134, 136, 155, 157, 160, 163,

200n52, 206n97, 218n23, 228n23statesman, 112, 129status civilis (civil state), 135–37, 158; as

negation of state of nature, 135

INDEX 257

status naturalis (state of nature), 135–37,149–50, 155, 158, 206n97, 229n25,229n32; as state of war, 135–36, classicalunderstanding of, 137, 149, 225n116

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 220n60Strauss, Leo, as conservative thinker, 2, 4; as

European thinker, 4–5; as refugee, 4; asteacher, 4, 195n4; “change of orientation”of, 147; conversion to political Zionism of, 11; criticized as authoritarian, anti-democratic and anti-liberal, 4, 226n129;early writings of, 5; experiences censor-ship, 202n20, 203n35; hermeneutics of, 3,215n103, 233n8; “Cohen and Mai-monides”, 109–11, 119, 122; Hobbes’s Cri-tique of Religion, 152–53, 165; Natural Rightand History, 82, 190–92, 213n69; Philosophyand Law, 90, 94–95, 98, 100–11, 116–19,122–23, 126–28, 131, 146, 162, 168, 172,191, 212n46, 212n59, 214n80, 216n107,227n142, 232n1; “Some Remarks onHobbes’s Political Science”, 149; Spinoza’sCritique of Religion, 7, 27, 37–77 passim,81–83, 89–91, 94, 96, 109, 111, 132,146–47, 149, 152, 165, 167–68, 217n109,217n14, 221n72, 224n99, 225n119,228n18, 238n89; The Political Philosophy ofHobbes, 7, 152–53, 160, 169–71, 231n62;“The Testament of Spinoza”, 72–73

Straussians, 4Sturm und Drang, 77sublunary sphere, 56–57, 64substance, 63summum bonum (greatest good), 155superbia (pride), 151, 155supernaturalism, 130superstition, 39, 40, 68–71, 157

Tanguay, Daniel, 222technology, 136, 140, 142, 145teleology, 87temporality, 171theioi nomoi (divine laws), 116, 194. See also lawtheism, 80, 92theocracy, 15theological-political problem, 7, 8, 16, 18,

23, 30, 72–74, 76, 100, 108, 147, 166,173–75, 177, 192, 194

theological-political treatise, 146, 231n66Theological-Political Treatise (Spinoza) 28–29,

31–76 passim, 78, 95, 167–68, 207n114;twofold strategy in, 43, 203n42, 231n66;purist critique in, 45, 57, 203n42; meta-

physical critique in, 46, 49, 51, 57; positivecritique in, 46–50, 52, 56, 63–65; philo-logical-historical critique in, 48, 50–51

theology, 22–23, 30–32, 40–41, 43, 48, 53,67, 87, 128, 140, 200n54, 203n42,204n51, 219n41; new postcritical, 20–23,26–27, 29–30, 74; natural, 85–87, 97; po-litical, 140, 144–45, 147, 225n119

theoretical life, 59, 110, 131, 193theoria (contemplation), 57, 60, 62–66, 111,

115, 157Thucydides, 187tikkun (restoration), 14, 16, 24Tönnies, Ferdinand, 227n3Torah, 10, 15–16, 25, 58–60, 114traditionalism, 84tragedy, 188transcendence, 19, 207n113tremendum, 26, 52Troeltsch, Ernst, 83truth, 53, 55, 65, 69, 87–88, 99, 111, 123,

134, 161, 163, 185, 211n39, 220n64t’shuvah (return, penitence), 20, 23–24, 30tyranny, 182, 234n17, 238n87tyrant, 162, 182

umma (religious community), 129unbelief, 12–13, 223n96, 231n65

Vaihinger, Hans, 208n123value, 205n73vanity, 80, 151–52, 154–55, 157, 166virtue, 81, 144, 156, 160, 162, 193, 230n47Voegelin, Eric, 2, 116, 191, 238n90

war, 138, 143, 166warrior virtues, 138Weber, Max, 83, 93, 98, 100, 171, 191, 213n69Weimar Republic, 5, 173, 226n129Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Ulrich von,

215n102will, 158, 231n57will to mediacy, 52, 66, 217n14wisdom, 87, 139, 162, 188–89, 191, 230n49,

231n50

Xenophon, 177–78, 186–87, 191, 237n72

Zionism, 9–11, 15–17, 19, 27, 42, 198n23,199n38; political, 8, 10–11, 13–14, 16–18,26–28, 66, 73–75, 95, 97, 100, 147,197n12, 198n13, 212n59; cultural, 10,13–14, 26, 82; religious, 10, 14, 16, 26, 82

258 INDEX

PHILOSOPHY / POLITICAL SCIENCE

BETWEEN ATHENS AND JERUSALEMPHILOSOPHY, PROPHECY, AND POLITICS IN LEO STRAUSS’S EARLY THOUGHT

David Janssens

Praised as a major political thinker of the twentieth century and vilified as the putative godfather of contemporary neoconservatism, Leo Strauss (1899–1973) has been the object of heated controversy both in the United States and abroad. This book offers a more balanced appraisal by focusing on Strauss’s early writings. By means of a close and comprehensive study of these texts, David Janssens reconstructs the genesis of Strauss’s thought from its earliest beginnings until his emigration to the United States in 1937. He discusses the first stages in Strauss’s grappling with the “theological-political problem,” from his doctoral dissertation on Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi to his contributions to Zionist periodicals, from his groundbreaking study of Spinoza’s critique of religion to his research on Moses Mendelssohn, and from his rediscovery of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy to his research on Hobbes. Throughout, Janssens traces Strauss’s rediscovery of the Socratic way of life as a viable alternative to both modern philosophy and revealed religion.

“In revising and enlarging a book that was originally written and published in Dutch for Europeans, the author has done a good job of addressing himself and his account to Americans. This is a major and serious scholarly contribution to the vibrant ongoing study and interpretation of Strauss’s thought. It adds a whole new dimension to the discussion of Strauss and will greatly deepen and broaden the understanding of him in the English-speaking world.”

— Thomas L. Pangle, author of Leo Strauss:An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy

“An extremely helpful introduction to the major themes of Strauss’s thought for both students and scholars, as well as a compelling demonstration of the light his early European work sheds on the themes of his more familiar American work.”

— Nathan Tarcov, author of Locke’s Education for Liberty

David Janssens is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Law at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

A volume in the SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss Kenneth Hart Green, editor

State University of New York Presswww.sunypress.edu

david janssens - between athens and jerusalem_ philosophy, prophecy, and politics in leo...

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